Concepts

For each category I have attached a brief summary of the concept underpinning the work; however through out my work there is a common factor which is inexhaustible – us!

I continue to draw from aspects of the culture I live in, especially areas concerning the rhetoric and systems of control excerpted upon most of us.

Education, on all levels, governments, global organisations, and the press, the power to create panic which at present seems quite topical with Northern Rock and the McCann’s A case strewn with speculation and misinformation, the family became an exercise in the way we target people or events and then replacing fact with speculation and affective language to increase the potential of the storyline. I should also mention where government policy is involved the Iraq war, of which some papers promoted and took great pleasure creating complex graphics, even putting their own cut-out shapes so you could play hanging Saddam

Areas which touch on my interests, whether the McCann’s or the projection of war by newspapers and governments they all hold keys to present and future work. Having read books on General Semantics, referring to Non-A and A systems, multi-valued logic as opposed to two valued thinking, distortion, manipulation through appropriate use of language and context, becomes an integral part of the substructure in my work.

 

Meaning is created by grammar / context and can be a powerful device if skilfully used, from convincing us to by a certain product to invading another country. Being an artist communication is obviously a key issue and therefore is open to critique on all levels in society including myself, when creating my books, I analysed my own communication techniques and volume two, part of the concept communicating the visual representation of a process, which becomes a piece of work in its own right, which also contains valid ideas waiting to be turned into a tangible form.

Bruce Nauman, Josepth Kosuth used words in their art, drawing ideas from Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations and Fiona Banner created a piece where all the text was removed, just leaving the punctuation, however, my work is graphic / image based, I do not make art about language or art about art, the distortion and manipulation of language acts as a foundation to my work and quite frequently as a form of inspiration. However as you see in the dark noise series I do move and respond in different ways to a subject  the connection is finer and engages with different elements born out of initial ideas.

Subject matter continually shifts, full of complexities, inevitable cu-de-sacs, I move from one event to another, the concepts / work shown here is just a portion of what surfaces from the buzz and static of everyday life we all suffer from, we may live in a world where people have become more cynical, but the manipulation stills carries on, with too much success at times.