The writer will tell you of his game
“Decks were always in the basement but the noise always hit the attic rooms full of smoke chat drugs and hellos to morning light. At a good hour the basement filled with people and dub step sounded out to everyone’s hearts. Girls would grind the decks with hard-edged repeated movements, their hair tied back with skirts and tights at a functional height to assist proper dance. There was more room for proper games outside though and you could leave via the back door, just a few steep steps up to the kitchen, out to the courtyard and out on to the backstreets of Paper Rubbish Row”
He always manages to start with a drawing, straight forward pencil and paper that then reveals character, mode, story encapsulated composition and narrative. The title comes from somewhere else when the props, synonymous with marks on the page and gradations of led, are held painted and placed in to the space. Then come the photographic memories and the conversations withheld; the escapes; the play; the ladders over walls and deaths on spiked iron fencing that never made it as far as the war effort.
So the title of this piece is “Game two; Tower Colour Cave”.
The work is a drawing in all intents and purposes, but also a direct confrontation of framing; the work is framed by the idea and its content, not a physical and conserving wooden encapsulation, so is displayed next to other found and folded pieces, also fixed to the wall, which build on its installation and relationship to other objects and works in the room.
I want to introduce the drawing through direct wording:
It shows two characters, both men, one instructing the other the other taking instruction. They are in a makeshift pavilion like space – a play space that has been constructed indoors; many an object and mask and shape adorns the floor as the instructor gives tips to the other man on how he should fire his bow. The other man holds what should be like some kind of bow, but in fact it is a useless piece of ephemera likened to the metal part of a windscreen-wiper. The action that would unfold is a game-play or a practice of performance, fight or confrontation – more than anything it is training. On the back of the instructor is strapped a doll dressed to look like a woman; an arrow pierces her left knee and another pierces her right breast but she is a doll for target practice so that is all fine. You get the idea that out of frame, the instructor would then proceed to be a target for the man holding the bow, but it is not entirely clear how the game will play out. Small tower shaped objects fill out the background and foreground, these relate to other works in the gallery where the drawing hangs. To the right of the drawing hangs four other pieces; these are taken from magazine pages. One is solid layer of the colour red. Attached to this is one piece of thin metal taken from a car windscreen-wiper. Another piece is a glossier page which has been collaged to formulate a tower shape – there are many colours within this: great big colourful pastel colours that were used as a pallet for other paintings in the space. Attached to this is another piece of metal identical to the other. The next piece is a small cutting from the glossy page. There is a further and final piece that hangs to the right and is pencilled on to the wall to look as if it hangs on a piece of string – this is another cutting from the same page.
“Are you English?”
“Yes”
