In March during a group crit, Sarah Kate Wilson felt that although the paintings were progressing well she identified an area that was not working-the newly attached supports were raw and seemed unresolved and sloppy. In preparation for the interim show I started to coat them in thin layers of, diluted gesso, rubbing down each coat with c240 sand paper. The paintings started to look ‘gallery ready’, more complete. I was also happy to allow elements of my process to come through-traces of pencil and under drawing visible, particularly at the edges-fraying the white gesso border-a kind of visual reminder of the interplay between painted surface and the photographic source.
The paintings are a direct reference to the dozens of images of I have photographed on my phone over the last couple of years- recrudescencent images of mainly household waste, appearing and disappearing in and around my part of South London-signifiers of transience, depravation and abandonment. With these source photos I have located a seam I will mine further in the near future, but my engagement with my audio archive over the last few months has slightly shifted my attention to a more autobiographical manifestation of obsolescence and abandonment. I have been struggling to reconcile the evocations of my nascent sound collaboration with Pierre Tol, during the Interdisciplinary Project and the painterly possibilities it provokes.
I felt that the momentum, built up before the interdisciplinary project had stalled- I became keenly aware of my painting methodology in a desire to up my production. I work slowly, the painting itself is painstaking and as a result I have started to map out the works I will be bringing together for my degree show. The FM radio sound piece will be a low level aural mist that permeates my space. It is not complete but the underling structure is there. I still have to locate a transmitter and host device to make it function. I hope to start working in the space that I will show in as soon as possible. I want to create a dialogue with the work I was making before I started the course (found slides) and more personal representations such as the junk at the bottom of my garden and an image of my old band’s tour van. I’m also excited at the prospect of painting on a dishevelled Gallo-Tone catalogue guitar.
Painted bronzes project
Earlier in the year I embarked on a small 3d collaboration/project to cast and paint a couple of small, melted wax carnations, made by my partner, sculptor Lara Ritosa Roberts, for her one person show in Maribor Slovenia. I was guided through the whole process by Drew Cole in casting, and I recorded each step of the process.
After sand blasting the bronzes I prepared them for painting with anti-rust car body spray primer, a lovely matt surface on which to apply the oleaginous enamel hobby paint. I am pretty confident in painting metal hand rails and old Victorian iron gutters in Hammerite but I had no previous experience of painting sculpture and so I looked at the work of Gavin Turk to find ideas and clues as to how to paint small illusionistic bronze objects. This was a small experiment in taking the painted surface into strangely unfamiliar/familiar territory.
