Tall-Tail, 2018 - Birch branch, pine needles, graphite, latex.Installation, variable dimensions.
Interested in how systems of categorization and classification neglect the mutability and specificity of things, Specious-Species, explores questions of embodiment and concerns Processes of transformation which expose the potential of the material medium as an intermediary to the imaginary. Engaging phenomenological experience, resulted in the creation of a set of ad-hoc cyphers and symbols that characterize my way of responding to the everyday things around me as a means of finding creative outcomes that result from a willed desire or inherent sensibility.
There is often a desire to resist classification or subvert terms and their meanings in my works. The definition of the word ‘Specious’ is; misleading in appearance, superficially plausible but actually false.Works on display, result from a general questioning about the state of apprehension in relation to something that isn’t immediately knowable, they remain in that moment prior to our asserting ‘it is this or that thing’. The intention expressing itself, is for the cultivation of a sentient engagement with the world.
An imitation fox fur pelt. With its title I intended to subvert prescribed notions of the dangerous ‘other’. Per its curation I wanted it to appear, not as an anxious flayed skin or the trophy of its captor - but languid, as though it had been discarded in carefree abandon.
Within the light-box is an image of a carved Phoenician 9th-8th Century BC relief, from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Nimrud, Northern Iraq. Descriptions of the piece range from; lioness devouring, to lioness mauling a boy…The description doesn’t fit. The boy doesn’t resist, it appears more like a loving embrace, seductive caress, or loving self-sacrifice…
The relational link between the object being photographed (pin-pelt) and the object capturing the image (pinhole camera), reflects upon musings that the ‘other’ is never truly ‘captured’, only momentarily. No-thing & no-one holds still.
