Fecundity 1-8 , collaged photographs, drawings by my daughter, gold coloured metal, ink and verruca treatments (silver nitrate, salicylic acid on aluminium panels, 100 x 55cm, 2024
These collages are an attempt to capture and offer up the uneven texture of the materials I encounter and deal with in daily life: in the street, at work, at home, material produced by strangers, students, colleagues and children. There is always more. More mess, more toys, more food thrown on the floor, more clothes to wash, more shitty nappies, more fly tipped rubbish, more emails, more weeds, more life. Nothing can be erased but only tidied away before it all spills back out again.
They were a new way of working for me. Once all the material had been prepared, the composition process was looser and more improvised. I moved stuff around, tried to find arrangements that worked without it being too highly constructed. I wanted the material to be spread around, like an all over painting. These are pretty much the closest I have gotten to abstraction. But maybe something more like the ‘contextural’ approach of artists associated with the Just Above Midtown gallery in NY in the 70s: an open, uninsulated approach to abstraction that pulls in the material discards and remains of life outside the studio and gallery.
