These screenprint designs were an interesting project. These were transferred to screens and printed mutiple times, raising questions about the implications of mutiplying illusory space; any illusion is of course, in part, a deceit, so to multiply a lie like this is almost like spreading propaganda, lying, in an aesthetically pleasing way, to the masses.
Octagons – simple yet complex geometric shapes that for me spoke of order and complexity, and where overhelmingly ‘human,’ completely constructed and relating strongly to conceptual space.
And the number eight has a resonance in many fields. one example is the octet rule, which defines stable atoms as those being circled by 8 electrons. Numerous other examples of 8’s importance led me to really obsess over these geometric forms, and question their significance.
Here are a few examples of my octagon works.
Event Horizon marked the beginning of a complete fascination with octagons – simple yet complex geometric shapes that for me spoke of order and complexity, and where overhelmingly ‘human,’ completely constructed and relating strongly to conceptual space.
In this series I photographed timeless, sublime things that evade human comprehension. The imposition of the octagon became a kind of classification system in this instance, systematically reducing everything in its gaze.
And yet, whilst strangely flattening the images they somehow gave more weight, framing these pieces and giving them an importance of sorts.
I like to view these pieces as tiny portals to some similar but alien continent.
with Cross I worked with illusion, seeing how i could reduce perspective drawing to it’s bare elements, and introduce repetitive line, a multiplication of something simple, to something confusing and seemingly spacious to the eye.
This piece, entitled Void was one of a large series of prints. The idea led on from my automatic writing in This Veritable Mess of Appetite, which I reused in this new context.
I layered the text up repeatedly, in a very simple fashion to create something I was amazed with; it’s almost like a landscape of my unconscious.
I am fascinated by geometric abstract forms that act as all encompassing statements. The problem however lies in that these are often utopian fictions that deny reality as much as they try to make sense of it. The problem, I believe, is one of balance. The key is to find a dialogue between order and chaos, without falling into utopian fallacy. We need order – but we also need the anarchic. A touch of imperfection makes a transient thing of purity and genius. It is this that I constantly search for.
