Richard:
My ideas are a little all over the place at the moment and, as I begin to back up some boxes of material and dismantle my trusty Ikea desk, I think of how my work might benefit from being around that of others in the same space. Something worth thinking about as I am to move in to my new studio in Edinburgh this week.
Different versions of a visual language in one space. This is something Ross and myself have been discussing recently. We are thinking of a direct collaborative piece that cross-divides both our uses of visual language, in one particular space. Ross’s abandoned house in Aberdeenshire has a room in it, a room in which a piece of his own work is already installed (I have touched on this house before, but not the room in particular). In the same room, as soon as I get round to posting it up, a piece of my work will also be installed. This will be the first physical outlet for our work in a given space. Not sure anyone will visit it there, but that is besides the point, its actual existence there, next to his, is more important in the instance: the conference of both languages will also be revealed in this context – a bit more of a conversation as it were…
So to these photographic pieces I have entitled ‘directories’: I thought I had better explain them but first, I shall enunciate Ross’s initial response to the images I sent intially to him as an email attachment: “I thought they were direct reflections, some sort of physical mirror image..”
Nope, they are simple cut and paste elements taken from photographs of floor-based collages and collages made just above and resting on a framed picture (which was salvaged from my partner’s friend’s general waste bin), using the same objects. The collages were cropped digitally to a square format, four of them. They were then cut from and the ‘cut’ circular element was pasted on to the next image – producing a direct relationship – that could indeed be seen as a reflection. Or a reflection of their very making? Perhaps… I am not sure.
These collages will end up as installations if we get the space.
For now they exist here and soon they will exist, printed on to cartridge paper, in the ‘abandoned house’ too. So the story unfolds. And meanwhile we return to the same pattern.
