return

Very pleased today having handed in a piece of artwork (my first since this time last year) for the annual Generator members’ show. I’ll post a photo next week, but for now I’m keeping busy by writing another revised artist’s statement.

There is no overriding subject for the work, although the icons of adolescence (lingerie models, heavy metal and science fiction) loom large. I am interested in the occult, and I use that word in keeping with its original meaning: the hidden. This involves tracing the correspondences between various archetypes, symbolic or otherwise, and pointing out these connections using irony and paradox. I would define this not as a question of faith, but as a process to be judged by evident facts. Just as a joke is either funny or not, so the art will be judged on whether or not it works effectively. For this strategy to be a successful one, I prefer to work with the simplest of means, or to use a set of ‘givens’ that will dictate the form of each individual piece. There won’t be any illusions, and no smoke-and-mirror tricks to the presentation. If there is to be any magic, the magic will be elsewhere, not residing in the object itself. Each decision is suggested by previous moves on the way to the pure articulation of an idea.