My work is concerned with the tension between individual freedom and systems of control in democratic societies. It takes on a structured orderly appearance, and the hard-edged, concrete nature of the work borrows from the geometric visual vocabulary of constructivism and geometric abstraction. Attention-grabbing use of colour and/or scale give the work immediate impact. The use of repetition and series, combined with a limited palate of bold, saturated, unadulterated colours references the history of geometric abstract painting and, to the contemporary eye, the colours of corporate branding.
The multi-part construction of many of the works enables them to be adapted and re-assembled in new situations, creating what Daniel Buren describes as an interdependence between the work and the site, subverting the notion of the autonomous art work. It also points to the way in which deregulation has allowed politicians and large corporations to manipulate facts and ‘the system’ to meet their own ends. My larger scale installations use the architecture of the institutional space to confront what Boris Groys describes as ‘the ambiguous character of the contemporary notion of freedom that functions in our democracies as a tension between sovereign [individual] and institutional freedom.’*
I aim to create a sense of playfulness through the use of colour and shape, and, in some works, by offering the potential for interaction by the viewer. But a more critical intention is hidden behind this playfulness. The destruction and reconstruction of the work by changing its configuration questions the authorship and sovereign control of the artist and, by implication, that of the state. It also serves to undermine the work’s superficial relationship to Constructivism and its utopian vision of a new social order.
Peter Halley’s 1986 essay ‘The Deployment of the Geometric’, offers up a vision of the geometrization of space and thought, where coercion is replaced by a fascination with the geometric, which is as relevant today as when it was written. Halley argues that this fascination takes over every aspect of our lives as we play the corporate, investment and entrepreneurial games, and ‘even the art game’. My work appropriates the geometric visual language of management in a similarly ironic manner.
*Boris Groys, Politics of the Installation, 2009
The multi-part construction of many of the works enables them to be adapted and re-assembled in new situations, creating what Daniel Buren describes as an interdependence between the work and the site, subverting the notion of the autonomous art work. It also points to the way in which deregulation has allowed politicians and large corporations to manipulate facts and ‘the system’ to meet their own ends. My larger scale installations use the architecture of the institutional space to confront what Boris Groys describes as ‘the ambiguous character of the contemporary notion of freedom that functions in our democracies as a tension between sovereign [individual] and institutional freedom.’*
I aim to create a sense of playfulness through the use of colour and shape, and, in some works, by offering the potential for interaction by the viewer. But a more critical intention is hidden behind this playfulness. The destruction and reconstruction of the work by changing its configuration questions the authorship and sovereign control of the artist and, by implication, that of the state. It also serves to undermine the work’s superficial relationship to Constructivism and its utopian vision of a new social order.
Peter Halley’s 1986 essay ‘The Deployment of the Geometric’, offers up a vision of the geometrization of space and thought, where coercion is replaced by a fascination with the geometric, which is as relevant today as when it was written. Halley argues that this fascination takes over every aspect of our lives as we play the corporate, investment and entrepreneurial games, and ‘even the art game’. My work appropriates the geometric visual language of management in a similarly ironic manner.
*Boris Groys, Politics of the Installation, 2009