Mixed Messages

Meaning hides in materials and the processes of making…...but it can be evasive

I favour unspectacular materials and ordinary fabrication processes to emphasise a connection with aspects of the ordinary, everyday.  Inexpensive, recycled, scrap and scavenged materials including vinyl, adhesive tapes, plastic sheeting, industrial shrink wrap, metal table frames, and other found objects form a palette of unremarkable, mundane materials.  The worn, abraded and depleted surfaces of salvaged materials contrast uneasily against colourful synthetic ropes, signwriters’ vinyl and patterned disposable table cloths.  At times the forms seem to want to suggest a glitzy, synthetic glamour, but more often the thin veneer that holds this all together betrays attempts at bluster and bravado.

An awkward, uneasy quality……

Unlikely combinations are aimed at contributing to an awkward, makeshift quality.  Materials applied through obsessive, repetitive and sometimes frenetic action, result in surfaces that are intensely layered, puckered and wrinkled. These may be viewed as a comforting patina of age and wear, or suggest a sense of frustration and tension.  Readings that align my work with evocations of happiness or fun based on the use of bright colours and patterns are balanced by these tortured or tattered surfaces.    

Hardness, softness, mostly……

Layers of palette-wrap secure many handfuls of plastic scrap into heavy lumps of varying hard and soft-ness, repeatedly bound with constant and increasing force.  These forms are pretty/ugly conglomerates of debris, gathered, bound, solidified and finally coated with a makeshift veneer of patterned gift-wrap, disposable table cloths, fluorescent tapes and colourful plastic.  Smells, marks and stains are mostly concealed, yet the lumpy forms promote the idea of uncertainty, and a sense of instability or imminent collapse is suggested by their bundling and binding together with knots so shonky as to cause deep embarrassment to any self-respecting Boy Scout or Girl Guide. 

 It looks like plastic but smells like a forest…...

The work courts contradictory interpretations.  Ambiguity allows for multiple, shifting responses.  Through conjuring opposing sensations within my work, I aim to provoke negotiation and permit renegotiation - cues that can allude to a range of plausible yet plurative sensations, associations or meanings. 

 It might be this or may be that……

Artist statement, 2017.