Yes, I Do This For a Living. Video on DVD, 6min50s, with Antonio Silva, 2007
Always preoccupied with man’s perception of the world, through an inevitably simplistic investigation of whether we order from what we perceive to be-inherently chaotic, or produce our own form of order in an already organised environment as a tool for understanding. It is the stubborn romanticism born from the incomprehensible, acting as an unrelenting force behind our complex relationship to ‘nature’. Neither accepting its presence as indistinct from our own, or allowing us to completely perceive it as ‘other’. This romanticism is central and necessary, but its undermin-ment is where my interest lies – could be described as a romantic {dis}rupture. Its method being something much less than explosive, but akin to the centre of explosiveness where it is almost silent but most destructive.
A quiet and subtle violence.
More specifically it is the catalysts that evoke such a shift. From what at first appears to sit comfortably in recognition; a preliminary understanding, to the undermin-ment of that recognition. It is not a concern with realness, of commentary on the absurdness of what is described as reality, but with a super realness, without glamour or courageous adventurers. I want that moment to be one of mistaken identity, which induces a small violent shudder.
It is specifically filmic and theatrical language that does this so poetically in the everyday. A super realness, ultimately simplified and persistently meaningful– in constant reference of these day-to-day gestures, but existing beyond and in-spite of them, albeit from safe distance. A hyper reality, that in many ways sidesteps the necessary simpleness that the comprehended world is otherwise reduced to. The imagery of the sublime and uncanny that hangs its own force in the romantic investment we place in ‘nature’ and it’s near complete ‘otherness’ to ourselves, shifting between recognition and that moment of disruption. More ‘creep’ than ‘blood soaked sheets’.
Werner Herzog described his love of nature that was ‘“against my better judgment....the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder”. Yet there is an anomaly in the fact that such horror has such harmony, and it sits comfortably together rather than in resistance. For Herzog cruelty is real and apparent, but it is its
constant and silent presence in the most suburban ideals that are interesting to me.
My work should act subversively, with [almost] out humour, ultimately to momentarily unsettle the viewer in their search
for stability, or ignore shudder.
Here is a list, as everyone likes lists. These along with the text I hope will go some way to you explaining the nature of my practise and the work I make.
- Georges Bataille, Werner Herzog, Forests, Luther Valentine, Moose/Scotland, Deserts and Death, Hanging/Lynch(+ing), Laughter(not mine), Kafka/animals, Stick insect/mimesis, Bresson, Blood(&) Lust, Gestalt, Bella Lugosi, French(,) Cruelty.
33. Digital print, 42x58,4cm, 2007.
Untitled. Pencil on paper, 19x28cm, 2007.
Wearied by this ever lasting sameness or The moon is dull. Mother Nature doesn’t call, doesn’t speak to you, although a glacier eventually farts. Digital print, 2007
Untitled. Mixed media installation, 2006.