Selected Works & MA Application

Jul 25

BA(Hons) Critical Fine Art Practice
Kingston University 1993-1996

Statement of Intent

Building on the experience of a three month scholarship to Milan, I have found my practice tending to begin with a pre-existing object, then move towards the construction of new interpretations for it. This technique was initially deployed in reference to Italian superstarlet Valeria Marini, whom I proposed as a personification of intricate bodily narratives.

Theoretically led, my recent work has been an attempt to construct an individual aesthetic vocabulary for discussing the rhetoric contained in interpreting these pre-existing art objects. This has tended to develop in two ways. The first is a growing interest in the re-evaluation of late Modernist practice, and reworkings of New York School stereotypes. In doing this, I have been using a process of gradual formal reduction (attempts to refine my work through progressive phases), which has paradoxically resulted in the reverse effect of ever widening the theoretical basis of the work. Therefore, consciously heavy with historical references, my practice has thus tended to work towards the inability to achieve an absolute.

Parallel to this has been the production of a large series of text and photographic based objects which borrow from the arena of light entertainment. This has resulted not only in lengthy written pieces but also in computer-aided explorations which attempt to blur the distinction between what might be termed as real or constructed. In this context, it has been particularly interesting to expand upon a notion of supposed indifference to any manner of artistic intervention.

My aim at this point is to attempt to marry these two ‘strands’ of the practice together in such a way that one might compliment the other, employing the vocabulary of the mediocre.

I also intended to expand upon my existing aesthetic vocabulary and actively encourage the linguistic and visual ambiguities which are appearing to become more and more integral to the themes which I have been considering.