gallery 1
exploring a social reality
Like just outlined, I explore an experimental arts practice, and a ‘collision’ with a social as opposed to the universal reality. The implications of this is that I must explore a collision with a reality that functions as a prism through which to see the world in itself, and so the logic of this collision is a little different. Central to this difference is that when ‘colliding’ with a social reality I explore the way that it will always be and can only ever be half description of what really exists and half projection.
With this in mind the works in this gallery are all constructed as I considered this collision as I ‘crash into’ a visualised reality. That is as it would be a visualised representation of reality expressed in images found in the media in general but usually collated on the Internet. All these works are generated from hundreds of hours of Internet/media image searches, and constructed from samples that I collected. A large part of constructing the works is an exploration of both ‘how’ these images are constructed, ‘how’ perform to shape my perspective, and also ‘how’ I might be able to use these different methods and effects for my own expressive purposes.
The works in this gallery track the way that I have explored a social reality in this way for the last eight years. The works of 2014 start this exploration as they consider the source of this reality or ‘us’. The works of 2016 then isolate a social reality from a universal one as I construct multiple samples. The works of 2019 the explored the reality that I isolated as it would be some strange psycho-ontological between ‘space’. The works of 2020 then the start my exploration of what kind of perspective we would have if we look through this constructed reality into universal one we all exist. The works of 2021 then relate to attempts tracking this perspective and are works that are a lead up for a planned show in 2022.
2021
The works in this gallery are trying to track the perspectives that I started to explore in the 2020 works. These works do not present a coherent body in themselves, but rather are precursors to a series of works that do explore one of these perspectives in more detail in 2022.
2020
The works in this gallery are a continuation of the works done in 2016 and 2019 and in essence represent the way that I have started to consider my own subjective perspective within a social reality as it would be a bubble or sphere through which we see and interact with a broader universal reality. What I am trying to capture in a sense is an emotion repose to the way that a social reality would mediate my perspective on the material world we live, and thus what it means to be an individual being in this state.
2019
The works from 2019 employed and explored both the sampling of images and the use of these samples for my own expressive/descriptive purposes. In a way they are an attempt to think about the different ways in which we can look at a social reality isolated from a universal reality, and different perspectives that we may have on this conceptual vista. The larger panels with circle motifs on them were called ‘phosphenes’, and were constructed from various samples that included both found and invented diagrams, and were attempts to capture some of the conceptual and emotional frameworks that I employed to terms with psycho-ontological prism. The two panel ‘ritual process’ by contrast were samples that I paired together after constructing them because in unison they revealed to me something of the ‘horizon’ of a social reality and thus something of it as i would be a strange kind of in between space in itself. In a way, these works are ‘landscapes’ that track my understanding of a social reality as a ‘horizon’.
2016
The works from the 2016 show like previously explained, were an attempt to identify and isolate a social reality as it would be distinct from its universal cousin. I did this, as I collected and remade many of the hundreds of image samples I had collected. The aim with these works, like explained previously, was to work out how these images worked, and through this isolate this reality as it would be half real and half ‘projected. When looking at the works in this show, as a whole, or even in groups, they reveal something like an ‘prism’ through which to see the universal reality we live. Consequently, when one critic suggested that what he saw was a world that was not unlike the crumbling and collapsing reality that science fiction writer JG Ballard presents, that I felt the works were doing what I hoped they would.
2014
These works from the 2014 show, exist in a transition point in my practice. That is, as they relate to a transition from exploring practice as it would be aiming an experimental arts practice at the subject of digitisation as it would be part of the universal reality we live and as I explore an experimental arts practice that relates specifically with a social reality. As a consequence of this, in some ways these works explore an interface with the Internet, and in some ways they explore the source of a social reality as it would be our agency or individual subjectivity. These works exist at this transition point and so are a little confused but are still useful to look at, because within them are seeds of many later works. These works also represent a shift in my practice from works that were either primarily or partly sculptural to being more image based pieces. Part of the confusion in these works relates to confusion I had shifting from an exploration of different materials to an exploration of different images.