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IT'S ALL
ABOUT
For the last 24yrs I've been working at The Arch Bronze Foundry in Putney. Over this time we've made sculptures for artists ranging from the Chapman Brothers, Maggi Hambling, Nicola Hicks, Rebecca Warren and many more.
Having been wedded to the casting process for years I've leant to cope with its mood swings and mercurial nature. It easily makes a fool of those who seek perfection and yet will happily seduce a creative mind with its alchemical possibilities.
Being an optimist by nature (I find most creative people are - they have to be or no art would ever get made) I felt that I had tamed the casting behemoth enough to attempt to produce a body of work myself....It took a while!
ME
THE WORK
Borrowing from Hogarth's 'A Rake's Progress', 'A Plutocrat's Progress' is a cautionary 'rise and fall' tale about the pursuit of power through wealth.
The series emulates Hogarth's eight scene structure and uses comic book caption boxes to imply a linear storyboard narrative.
The narrative however is set within an unclear timeline. It reads more like a dream, where subconscious imagery and memory are blurred in the act of recollection. Each of the works/scenarios could be a real depiction or describe a subconscious truth on the Plutocrat's journey.
This duality allows for the possibility that we, as the viewer are 'Plutocrat' and this is our dream, or, that we are simply voyeurs of his progress, or maybe both.
Looking back at the process of making this series I can now understand that it is essentially a conversation, a friend, a companion with whom I can discuss the baffling world we inhabit. The artworks themselves have become islands of clarity or act like buoyancy aids protecting against the wake of detritus that follows the exploits of the rich and powerful.
'We are all just animals' is a series of sculptures that uses and plays with the idea of anthropomorphism.
In fiction and folklore throughout history we endow animals with human, and humans with animal characteristics and emotions. It is a device that triggers a kind of cognative bias - we impart our cultural understanding of the animal into the human context and it creates richer character recognition.
For 'Displacement Blues' my starting point was a question that arose whilst listening to a Tom Waites song. If Tom Waites was an animal what would he be and what would he sing about? A bear growling out a song about Displacement Blues felt beautifully obvious.
I hope the interpretation of 'Displacement Blues' will hinge between the humanising of the animals and the idea that they are performing a song about loss of habitat. I want to encourage the viewer to engage with them in the crisis they face, not simply as entertainment.
In thinking about anthropomorphism and the elasticity of interpretations it allows, I've come to appreciate why it has proved to be such a compelling artistic device to explain the world and our place in it.
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