More or Less

Previously my work all related to ’self’, in terms of human behaviour, interaction and reaction between people, it seemed a logical, if somewhat accidental, to investigate the relationships and connections between people, events, behaviours and interaction through mapping. Mapping is an effective means to visually represent these relationships.

I mapped out a response to these various relationships in a visually stimulating way. The material I have chosen have reflective qualities, which cause the event to be mirrored or repeated through the illusion of light and not physical objects. Creating an ephemeral illusion flitting in and out as if imagined.

Binarism is evident providing several polar opposites in the work including:

light/dark,
positive/negative,
Solid/Space
Filled/Empty
Shiny/Dull

I embraced these opposites and used them to highlight the importance for the relationships to be strong, separate, diverse and symbolic and representing both real and imagined spaces.

The work is multi-faceted looking at many potential readings that mimicked the notion of drawing and contain any number of outcomes.

An important aspect of the work was taking a familiar representation and putting it into a different context to give re-interpretation to the work.

I represented a piece of imagery taken from a map of Derby using aluminium and cut it through industrial process into a sculptural representation. This was a representation of a place that was personal to me and that had memories and history attached. This was another important reading of looking at the past through rose-coloured glasses, which is perhaps the opposite of the reality.

I took the visual representation of streets in Derby and removed all identifying indicators from it. This resulted in a very organic looking drawing that was open to interpretation. I loved the fact that the more detail I removed then the more freedom I was giving the viewer to interpret the drawing. In this instance LESS is more.

The work has been documented to provide a series of images depending on the sculpture’s reaction to natural light. This documentation will be presented individually in the future as a separate work.