Prospect

I went along to the Prospect opening at the City Gallery with my friends Liz and Andrew (pictured above) on Saturday night. I didn't end up seeing much of the show, what with the milling crowds and all, but had an extremely enjoyable night, chatting to lots of people. I was even able to compliment Peter Peryer on his blog. Check out his post on the Prospect show.

Something about what I'm doing

I am currently exploring how meaning can be codified visually by combining abstract symbols with figurative representation. In The world, there are three overlapping picture planes: on one is a Gnostic symbol for the world, on another stick figures spelling out a Latin phrase in semaphore, and on the third a stylised representation of a house on the edge of a volcanic island that functions as a visual metaphor for the ideas encapsulated in the symbols. I am working under a definition of art as symbolic thought expressed materially in a self-conscious and highly associative way – something happens in the mind of the viewer.

A representation of an object can be related to other elements in a picture through purely formal means: its size, its placement, and its treatment relative to other elements. Much of my work deals with the interaction of positive and negative space, figure and ground, and painting and drawing. I try to place my work in the interzone between these poles. In Hide and seek, a figure clutching a knife lies in wait behind a vertical pencil line that divides the pictorial space. As well as depicting that interzone, this work alludes to the sometimes antagonistic relationship between artist and viewer.

I see pictorial space as giving the viewer access to an alternate world in which they have ultimate freedom to act. My current work is concerned with using these methods to present a philosophical system that I call ‘common-sense nihilism’. I have been doing a series of self-portraits in which I take on a variety of guises and identities. Self-portrait as magic bishop is not just an homage to the Dada performers of the Cabaret Voltaire, it also depicts one strategy for surviving in a hostile and contingent, not to mention pointless and absurd, universe – armouring yourself in a carapace you have made.

PLF

We had the first PLF meeting for 2007 on Monday. Very pleasant it was too. The highlight was a pipe tobacco that's unchanged since they first started making it in 1792, which I smoked through a clay pipe bearing the features of William Shakespeare:

Kitchen tiles

Messing about

Quote of the weekend

Someone who I've only chatted to a couple of times came up to me when I was out at the pub with a couple of friends on Saturday night to say: 'I've had a really good look at at your work, and I want you to know that I really hate it.'

This was the second time that evening someone had told me at length how much they hated it. The first time was someone being drunk and belligerent, but I got the decided impression the second one was a weapon being deliberately discharged in my direction.

As a consequence, I've decided my work needs to get far more aggressive.

And another

My new pad

More symbols

Can't Play Won't Play at the Adelaide, 22 November 2006

We can't play and we won't play:

Dada manifesto:

Silly Sausage the clumsy nazi spy: