A Life, A Leaf, A Limb, A Shard
2025
Presentation of a developing body of work around the fragmentation of self and fracturing of identity, using drawing, text and moving image. The installation consisted of three 2m tall charcoal drawings on bespoke timber support, a projection, text work in vinyl and as printed loose leaf and a number of smaller charcoal drawings on tracing paper.
Using the heroic archetypes of figuration of Greek marbles from the Parthenon and other reliefs depicting the battles between Lapiths and Centaurs I wanted to point to the idea of the historic cultural role models that exist for men. Whilst these are technically brilliant they are quite literally broken but also represent something so outmoded as to be somewhat pathetic. The projection features my own dismembered body parts aping poses from these sculptures, whilst large charcoal drawings abstract these elements further into almost cartoonish or childlike gestural renderings of boyish battles.
Smaller drawings pepper the walls showing fragmented body parts quickly notated on tracing paper, bits of bodies floating in space. A new text explores this idea more personally related to my feelings of mental fragmentation. Drawing as a way of thinking about work, skill and representation, it being a fracturing of time and representation itself. The producing of a drawing through marks built up being akin to what Bergson spoke of as memory being like beads on a string. Drawing being about the self made visible, but never able to fully represent that in totality.
Exhibited at Arts University Plymouth Project Space in April 2025.