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| One ongoing project I have been developing is Ceramic works. These are vase-shaped sculptures made from clay, left-unfired, smeared around a mass produced ceramic vase.
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| The latest incarnation involved larger vases than before. Due to the size and the relative thinness of the layer, the resulting sculptures developed deep cracks during the clay’s drying period. I used short strips of masking tape to hold the drifting chunks together.
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| These sculptures break easily and can be shown only once. They can’t be stored. The idea is passed on so the next time one is needed it can be brought into existence with the knowledge that it will soon be gone again. I see them therefore as being like stage props for theatre.
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| I displayed them on a convoluted plinth with a maximum elevation of 1cm above the floor. The plinth was made from neatly folded towels upon which rested the ceramic works in a museum-like line-up. The three towels formed a rectangular enclosure in the centre of the room, two of whose sides I fenced-off with waves of silk ties, weighted down with the same pebbles that appeared in the Blue meets yellow photos. The remaining side of the enclosure I left an opening so people could enter. This was made of two silk tie spirals (or flourishes), also held in place with pebbles, a mysterious force having seemingly burst out of the enclosure and escaped.
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| On the walls around this floor drawing/sculpture/performance piece were two photographic series, Esperanto Instituto Rotterdamo (closed on Sundays) and Blue meets yellow.
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| In the title I falsely refer to the world Esperanto association’s Rotterdam head quarters as the Esperanto Instituto Rotterdamo. This does make sense in Esperanto but it is not its name. These photos are tightly cropped images of various incidental feature of the instituto’s architecture: the doorbell, chairs, blind pullers, a little sign in Esperanto telling passers-by the doorbell is to the right, ‘la sonorillo estas dekstre’ and books that were on display. These photographs are very beautiful and mysterious. I had them printed 10cm x 7cm, to mimic the half-frame cameras of photography’s thrifty past, even though they are from digital files. I displayed them on large sheets of either white or pink paper.
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| Blue meets yellow is a series of around 50 inkjet prints of digital photographs of two vases arranged on an infinity wall, alongside some pebbles. The photographs were displayed in chronological order, so as sunlight enters and ruins the infinity effect, it is happening in real time and is as much of an actor in the overall play of objects as the vases and pebbles and infinity wall.
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| The strange surface of these photographs comes from a convoluted, pseudo-photographic process I developed especially for them. The casual observer may notice something inspecifically strange about the paper but wouldn’t know what exactly had brought them to that state. The process started with a long roll with all the images inkjet printed on it. I cut them out into individual frames and dipped them all in water. After they had dried I painted some of them with PVA glue to make them glossy, ‘like photographs’.
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| Another ongoing project is Roses. These are also photographic works, consisting of glossy photographs of flowers, taken in various municipal parks and private gardens in London in the summer of 2010, printed at a local supermarket photographics ‘lab’ (Kodak printer) and finally tessellated into square or rectangular ‘swatches’. I always meant for them to become wallpaper, not necessarily as prints on a roll of paper but similarly to their current form as individual photographs, cropped and stuck together with tape to form a contiguous wall of flowers. The largest block I have so far made was for a group exhibition that was featured in an episode of the BBC’s Culture Show in a section about the generally negative effects of gentrification in south London. The whole group exhibition was mistakenly titled James Whittingham: The new me by the programme makers (The new me was the title of one of my sculptures).
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| This tessellation of roses measured approximately 2.5 metres by 4 metres – a mere fragment of my original dream – and cost nearly £200 to make. I realised then that in order to take the work to its logical, installationary conclusion, I would need some extensive grants-based funding. So this project currently exists in swatch form, nine photographs tall/wide, and as hundreds and hundreds of jpegs.
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| The Roses tessellations exist in the form of a grid. I experimented with the grid form again in a set of paintings called Monochromes. These were designed to fold into easily transportable sizes for ease of shipping to, say, a biennale in, say, Seoul or Taipei. Of course, the biennale would probably organise for artworks to be shipped properly and wouldn’t expect artists to bring everything in their suitcases. Really, I was concerned with the problem of simultaneously being a creator of new art objects and also a conservationist of one’s own work, especially with the kind of itinerant lifestyle I lead. The question of how to make art that is easy to store or, even better, exist without the need to be stored… my work is all about prosaic concerns such as this, which at first might seem perverse and against the ethos of high poetry but I think great things can come from it.
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| The monochromes are made from paper, folded into a grid, which is then painted with layers of watercolours and gouaches, and washed and re-painted, all of which damages the paper, causing it start disintegrating. This leaves people unsure about its history. ‘Were all these rectangles assembled into a painting or was it a continuous whole which is now falling apart?’ they ask.
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| The paintings formed a backdrop to a performance I acted out lying on the floor with the monochromes hanging in a line, high above me. I wore sunglasses and spoke, from memory, a text titled My island. Although it doesn’t begin or end like one (there is no Dear Bill or yours lovingly, Dad), I think of the text as a letter, a letter to you, an anonymous person in charge of my artistic legacy. It is in two parts, each one describing an impossible situation. In the first, I talk about my adopted home, an island exactly the same size as my recumbent body, teeming with an over-abundance of plant life, magical aquifers, springs and friendly birds. Boredom never occurs there. The second part is heralded by a dream that the character recalls about his future grave at the centre of a giant, specially constructed mausoleum. This part describes in great detail the superficial look of the grave but precise details about how to geo-reform a small continent (e.g. Australia/Europe) are left out. Instructions on certain minutiae, what plants should be there and what sort of settlement concerning the potential over-commercialisation the hallowed grave of such a hallowed individual and great artistic statesman (i.e. no shops or cafés) are included, as are precise thoughts how to intern the body so A, everyone can see me and B, I don’t rot.
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| Research
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| Robert Gober spoke about the moment he thought about using working taps in his sink sculptures. He said he had read critiques of the sink sculptures referring to their having been made by a gay artist and being useless monuments. Then he thought of running taps, ‘working beautifully, almost to excess’. This is a strange comment from him because if something is working to excess it is still somehow not working properly. But I think that’s what he meant. This would be in relation to My island.
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| Kippenberger’s recently ruined sculpture. His bucket cleaned by a cleaner. ‘Why not just repaint the bucket?’
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| John Clare’s poems about pre-enclosures-act England.
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| Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden
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| Carl Jung, Man and his symbols
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