ARTISTS TALKING

# 1 [9 February 2008]

My time-based works have utilized: a child’s bubble machine a music box mechanism, a cascade of buttons, celebratory candles and a puddle of ink, these signifiers have been imbued with a monumentality through careful framing, to elevate their status. In the most successful pieces the audience becomes apprehensive as they encounter this inventory of the mundane. It is not the objects that create the suspense, but the narrative repercussions that they embody. A photograph, ‘Droplet’ depicting a puddle of water demonstrates this; the mark is evidential of an action, which happened so recently, that it is still wet. The viscosity enables the domed droplet to act as a lens, which is on the cusp of absorbing the space encompassing it.

My practice is developing along parallel paths, for that over the past few weeks I have had to opportunity to tend to a reconstructed section of landscape within the Harrington Mill Studio, as a part of my practice. The 15ft x 15ft site requires constant maintenance to preserve its evidential quality as a sampled site.

The daily ritual of watering the plot that I have set up in my studio, demonstrates the obsessive nature of the role of the caretaker. Whereby without my fostering presence the site would succumb. This task of sustaining the site has become something of an alternate occupation. This is a key characteristic not only for this piece, but for my practice as an artist, I become immersed within the whole process of production.

This miniature landscape has it’s own microclimate, regularly producing surpluses e.g. fairy rings, mini-landslides and infestations of midges. Although conceived as an installation piece, in reference to the notion to retention, the idea relating to the period between witnessing an event and subsequently retrieving that memory. The grassed territory has become almost self-determining, providing numerous opportunities for both video and photography works.