In 2012, an organised trip to London and the Tate Modern, introduced me to Contemporary/Conceptual Art and although I went along with an open mind, I found that blank monitor screens, and collections of detritus with pretentious, elitist labelling offered very little evidence of craftsmanship, and I was left cold and uninspired by the experience.
However, a field trip to Orford Ness in Suffolk, provided a rich source of material for my work. I was struck by the contradiction of beauty and ugliness within the wild natural landscape, when seen in contrast to the legacy of redundant, degraded, man made fabrications.
My work is driven by the concept of man’s destruction of a beautiful, wild landscape. My attempt to portray that contrast is represented by conceptual images including:
Contrast1 an inverted black and white oil painting on a small canvas board. Contrast2 a black/white and red illustration of beauty and ugliness with hazard warning signs and a warning sky. Legacy a cardboard construction with edited contrasting photographs and detritus from the site.
These were my earliest attempts to portray a conceptual narrative in my work and was influenced by Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines, as seen below.
Below is a selection of my photographs and images from the Orford visit.
NOTE: CAPTIONS SHOW WHEN IMAGES CLICKED/OPENED INDIVIDUALLY.
