Transparency

My drawing practice involves re-appropriating mass media imagery either in the form of newspaper/ internet images or photographs I have taken from news stories on television. I use the camera on continuous shoot to freeze frame and slow down split second facial expressions and body language; to reveal mannerisms, sequences of movement and interactions. I use series of photographs as source material to create drawings on long rolls of tracing paper that produce an unfolding narrative. I trace imagery as this process enables me to fragment and overlap images, to reference the many sides of a story or event.

The drawing I am currently working on, Transparency, (2010, ink on tracing paper, 1200 x 85 cm), is a work in progress on the subject of the 2010 general election, the new coalition government, and my feelings about how political ideologies are contained within ambiguous rhetoric, such as; ‘transparency’, ‘big society’, and ‘freedom of choice’. In this drawing, I seek to highlight the reports in the national and local news regarding the present government’s ideology of, ‘rolling back the state’, as I am concerned about the potential impact on communities and public services.