Map team please this is important
Introducing ‘Globe Lilo Wash’: “All the work wanted to do was expand so I had to dress it quickly in fur and silver”
The fur was taken from a taxidermied squirrel that lived in the northern edges of The Kingdom near the shores of the River Tay. The small disco ball was taken from the pavement of George IV Bridge in Edinburgh. The plastic is from somewhere else. The paint was brought from North East Derbyshire, given to me from a widower who’s wife used to paint by numbers.
According to its proximity to a light source (a glass globe wedged in to a strip light installed lengthways on the floor) this object makes up an oddly constructed ball shaped oil painting.
“I thought of this on the final hour of the residency. I was also thinking of what to pack and take home with me. This work was largely about packing everything in to one place but also accepting some things would be laid to waste. My compadre took an excursion in the beginning days of our stay in the gallery. Out on the streets of Amsterdam she found a bright yellow lilo and dragged its deflated existence on to the apartment floor. She cut from it a breast to use as a casting device, and left its remains in the corner behind the speaker that spoke the candid words of Alanis Morissette for 301 hours straight. In this last hour I had locked myself in the room and decided to make something of the yellow left overs: this is how I did it…”
It looked like something that had been screwed up so much that all that could happen was for it to then expand. I guess the purpose of the work was to negotiate the material’s instability – to screw and fold and to spend time close to the plastic mass. To then cut in to, take from and pull out its insides and make it formalise enough for it to look as if it could somehow stand up. What struck me most of all was its war paint, its still wet war paint, brown, red, green and blue – straight from the tube no less.
“The trick was to deal with its three-dimensionality in character and form. To apply paint was a strategic exercise in limiting the amount of smudging on myself and the surrounds. What came from this was a strange sort of character similar to the demise of Tetsuo in the 1988 Japanese film ‘Akira’.”
It also matched the monstrous and orifice forms of Jennifer, her sticky toffee wig and black masses needed some sort of colourful comparison.
“So you like Japanese films?”
“Yes, they inspire me and allow me to make the work I make”
“But you are English”
“Yes”
