To the Light Exhibition started with the idea of responding to powerful incidents, events, specifically, the riots of 2011. The staggering images full of violence and devastation. We have not been able to rationalise that which was so irrational in a satisfying way.
The paintings are a contemplation of violence and reparation. I made a painting of shattered glass and the things beyond. I deconstructed spaces with stitch and paint, I brought something feminine, protective, sensitive and tender into these violated spaces, the stitch is a poetic response to the violence.
worked through images, research and ideas to an end where I gave up the idea that I could rationalise this space, these actions, and these events. It led to me take these thoughts about irrational space to create paintings that became much more about psychological space, of disconnected and connected space, of incomplete spaces/ shattered/ deconstructed and reconstructed spaces… I went through the buildings to create new landscapes…where there was both dynamism and delicacy. These paintings are less about the literal spaces and physical spaces yet they allude to them.
I have drawn from other sources, architectural journals and taking photos of other buildings, their structures creating a rich painterly space, an articulation of space that doesn’t obey the rules of perspective or logic. An experience of shattered space / transparency/ reflected space of a glass. These buildings are landscapes of halls of mirrors, with form and shape reflecting and refracting upon itself which reminded me of the spaces of the glass windows that were shattered during the riot
The spaces I depict now in my work which has progressed on from the riots, is about unfolding possibilities, about potential as well as suspended space, where space is inversed, lovingly reversed. I created a space which has become safer, it is not barbed with glass, or shards or splinters or broken things, you step into it freely. The paintings are spaces in which you can breathe….discover…learn and unlearn…it is a treasured space…it holds tables and chairs sometimes…fundamental things on which we rest, work and talk.
Instead of a negative impulse of the underlying dislocation and rending of space I have turned this space into a creative positive outcome. The misrepresentation of space allows a powerful reimaginning. It is a challenge…A puzzle for you to understand.
So from more physical representations of buildings to this more abstracted space a thread runs through all these paintings. They are all connected. Through an idea about transformation, representation and reparation of space.
