20:22 plaster aluminium, acrylic 102 x 100.5 x 82 cm 2022. photo: Article Studio
I started casting fingers in in 2021 and cast about 2000 during the last 6 months of my dad’s life when things were too slippery and overwhelming to articulate in words. The fingers are almost all mine. Collectively when arranged ‘facing’ forwards they seem to have an unsettling presence, and remind me of Gormley’s Field of 1993. For me the fingers represent physical touch and feel, the sensitive membrane and ability to ‘know’ that finger tips possess, and also the notion of digital time: the numerical recording of time passing as 20:22.
SINGLE woollen blankets, metal core 90m x 30cm x 30cm 2024
SUPER KING woollen blankets, metal core 2m x 30cm x 30cm 2025
SUPER KING + SMALL HOURS projection 2m x 30cm x 30cm 2025
BED is a series of ‘plinths’ or towers at heights reflecting the widths of UK bed sizes (in production): Super King, King, Double, Queen, Single. This work began as a single 1m high plinth housing a projector for SMALL HOURS animation. I find plinths problematic and was making an elaborate comedy plinth for installation.
Some of the blankets came from my deceased Dad’s house and some from house clearances. Dad died at home in his bed after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s and dementia, diseases that are rife throughout my family. I spent a lot of time with my Dad in his bedroom while he was slowly leaving having stopped him from being taken pointlessly to hospital, and was with him when he went.
I came to see the blanket tower had its own presence, provoking feelings of nostalgia, tenderness, itchiness, memorial. There is jeopardy in the narrowly stacked blankets, and their relation to the gendered hierarchies in the names of bed sizes, the difficulty with sleep, the bedroom, night.
PARENT BODY rolling pin, nails 18cm x 7cm 2023
VOODOO MUM rolling pin, dressmakers pins 18cm x 7cm 2023
OUT OF SORTS wood, human teeth, golf tees 10cm x 4cm x 4cm 2023
RADIO HEAD found materials 24cm x 20cm x 10cm 2023
BABY TENDERISER 80mm x 50mm wood, metal, baby teeth 2024
POTATO MASHER (I Do Not Miss You) bat, fishing wire, metal 40cm x 6cm 2023
WILL POWER found ceramic, cork, wire 7cm x 9cm x 4cm 2023
MURIEL wood, paint, ceramic, metal, bakelite, plastic, rubber, pencil 24cm x 9cm x 7cm 2023
FULL AUDIO EXPERIENCE wood, pins, paint, radio parts 9cm x 14cm x5cm + variable 2023
NICKERLESS wood, nails, string, oil paint 22cm x 6cm x 4cm 1988
LITTLE RICHARD bone, leather, wood, nail 11cm x 10cm x 6cm 1987
photos: Article Studio
DROP series of 5 resin cast plastic detritus 11cm x 11cm x 15cm each 2020 photo: Mike Garlick
In the ‘70’s or maybe the early 80’s, my mother stopped her car and picked up some rubbish that had been thrown out of the car in front. The story goes that she followed the car back to a house on the edge of town, knocked on the door and handed back the rubbish, saying that she thought the driver had dropped something. She could have been punched in the face. I don’t know what really happened but I like the story. My mother never got particularly riled by anything, except religion, which she was not at all in favour of, so this story impressed me a lot. I’ve been picking up other peoples rubbish for years.
INERTIA at INCENDIARY curated by Patricia Brien SVA Stroud 2019
photo: Mike Garlick
In 2019 I issued a call-out for unwanted decorators paint, of which there is approximately fifty-five million litres a year in the UK. It is said that most home owners in the UK store, on average, six cans of paint, much of it half used and deteriorating in garages and sheds. The abutment of aspiration and procrastination is evidenced in cans of dried out colour and their display of familiar names and logos.
Inertia was assembled as an absurd act of community service, house paint being easier to accumulate than to dispose of. People were delighted to offload their waste.
The work was installed during Incendiary 2019.
An unintended effect, in this exhibition dealing with toxic environments, was that the installation gave off such strong vapours that each can had to be covered in cling film.