My practice is centred around a fragmented studio formalism, broadly within the post-minimalist space. I identify with the trend in conceptual practice which Michael Newman refers to as the attempt to free materiality from an “objecthood” that has become aesthetically and politically compromised. In this context, conceptual approaches can be redirected towards valid material processes.
At present I am creating collaged photographic work using degraded and found material. Each component piece is a self-reflexive gesture within the studio space. The formal and tactile properties of materials are observed for their inherent capacity to act as a veneer and their alternative potential for fragmentation. The work oscillates between a non-linear baroque pictorial space and a trompe l’oeil or illusory effect. The properties of the photographs lend a veneer of beauty, a semantic margin existing in the time between assembly of the pieces, their being photographed and taken apart again. This lends a theatrical, fragmented and hybrid aspect to the work.
Beauty and potential transcendence appear to be unavoidable issues for me. However, there is an ongoing tension between the elegant and the formal, and its subversion and erosion. Autonomous form is undermined by imminent collapse which acts as an analogy for a reappraisal of aesthetic values to reflect an unstable and degraded environment.