This is the initial piece in what hopefully is destined to be a new series of work rather than simply an idea that peters out and dies.
I’m aware I’m possibly working on too many things at the same time. It can’t be helped; it seems to be how I’m made! But this series isn’t pure flight of fancy; it does have a practical purpose as it’s destined for a show in Maidstone Museum in November if I can manage to sort it out! Anyway, back to the task in hand…
The piece seems to work really well aesthetically – it received a lot of enthusiastic feedback from those who’ve seen it. But there were also gentle hints of a wider issue perhaps most simply summarised as lacking conceptual rigor. It’s possible I’ve been seduced by the joys of form, colour and materials at the expense of rationale for making the piece in the first place.
Words seem to bring me back on track; jotting down key phrases, then editing, sifting, and sorting these until they’re pruned back to bare bones, holding them in my mind as I make version two. They make slightly unusual reading – a saturated, condensed, highly focused output – but they help ground me.
In this case, the key phrases seem to be:
The gaze – an impermanent point-of-view. Shifting. Unstable. Tenuous. Fleeting moments.
Luxurious indulgence. Opulent richness. Theatrical surrealism. Distasteful seduction. Mass consumption.
Desired. Collected. Possessed. Consumed to the point of destruction.
Disruption. Disjuncture. Constructed conflicting truths. Nothing is intact but fractures allow illumination to escape.
Contradictions: perfect – imperfect, passive – aggressive, real-I – fantasy-I, collude – resist.
Block. Damage. Undermine. Destroy. Obliterate.
