My inability to spell and obsession with stories has always been lurking somewhere within my work. I have a fascination of words, narratives, language and how we construct understanding within it in terms of sculptural space.
I make books, films, performances and have dabbled in 2D static work but that somehow doesn't cut the biscuit (and i like biscuits - alot).
And please do not take the mickey out of my spelling. It will not get any better and I really really like my little wordy mistakes.
If you are interesting in collaborating(I love collaborating), inviting me to show some work or just generally have a question please do get in touch.
Performances, books and sculpture
F. Scot Fitzgerald wrote this
NernernerNERRRner
Merry F***ing Christmas
One above the breast
But I wrote this one
Pants
This piece has had many forms, performances and incarnations. First it was a durational performance of myself reading The Great Gatsby in its entirity whilst someone transcribed it into shorthand. This resulted in this book. It was then another performance of the transcriber of this book reading it out and myself writing down what was saying.
This was performed at Banner Repeater. The story in itself remained the same but the language involved in it was garbled and almost child like. The piece has existed after that as a sound piece and has been exibited in shows in and around London.
This piece was made at a time when I was quite simply being blocked by my ideas. I was struggling with the physicallity of the word, and how the meanings in thier usage played with sculptural methodologies and i didnt have the language to express what I was tryng to get at. So i made a 7ft cardboard bookend, like you do.
It was hilarious, absurd, as if it was sticking its toungue out at me. I have to say i kind of liked it.I would love to make one of these sticking out the side of the building - if i could ever get the fundng to do that kind of thing.
The idea that words are somehow worn down or morph when repeated was the basis for this one. I was looking at wasted words and the little indescresions that are used when we speak.
The piece consisted of me writting Merry Christmas over and over again onto a flip chart over the period of about an hour untill i hit the bored. It resulted in a cascade of fallen and crumpled paper which was a kind of debris of the words being written.
I am currently working on a longer durational piece involving more board and microphones... Watch this space.
This is a little experiment I did when I was obsessed with the format of books and the physical weight that they held. I wanted to unleash the words of the confines of the book, but in retrospect I realise I was confusing the physical weight of the book with the burden of undefined meanings of the words. It also did not work because it was on ribbon, so feminine connotations started to be read into it. Not good.
I also chose to write Snow White by Donald Barthelme on it (1967), which now seems ludicrous because as a piece of metaphysical writing, the form of the book and language is already acknowledged within the text. I am glad that this was an experiment and nothing more.
This is a neat little piece i did, when reserching the ownship of language. This piece was the begining of me looking into relationships between objects and meanings, in terms of langauge- be it only a stirring at the back of my mind. It is a copy of The Great Gatsby, writtem by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I over-wrote the words on the page with the same words, so essentially i wrote The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald from begining to end.
The problem with this work was that the idea is there in the first page that i wrote. The work was there. It was labourious task which didnt need to be completed. The idea in this is definetly more important than the compleded work, and i could have left it there. I still insisted on finishing it: the fool i am. And now i have a book that i wrote but cannot read.
This is a scan of a bookend that my friend did for me one day as my scanner had broken. I wanted a silohette of a bookend for the front over of a piece of writting. Over time it has become a kind of symbol or logo of my work; a kind of self referencing nod to my bookend-ed frustrations of my work.
It also looks like a pair of trousers: which i find rather amusing, especially when placed in empty space. It looks like they are floating rather than being so defiant in thier grounding.