The Box Part 1 inset detail
The Box Part 1 Depicts two main objects, one seemingly organic and one not. They
very almost come into contact with each other. The appearance is as if the one
is growing from the other except that they do not quite share contact in such a
way. On looking closer it is perhaps more likely that the one may penetrate the
other. Perhaps it is just prior to an intercourse between the two, - A literal
impregnation of the something robotic by the something botanical, in a most
unfashionable surreal style.
The box of the title is the mechanical element- “the robot head”
maybe the head of the robot from the film Saturn 3 or Short Circuit,
but most likely a 3D ‘viewmaster’ from my child-hood combined with a keyboard
button and some bent wire coat-hangers, sitting on a surface next to a small
box of camera film. The central plant like structure is both phallic and
vulvic. Overtly so, and is drawn from some of Gerald Scarfes' drawings for the
film of Pink Floyds the Wall. But it is not sinewy or intertwining it does not
sprout up but it has dripped down like a silicon stalagmite. Perhaps
it’s been there for a very long time?
There, Where? In a painting/ with-in a painted surface.
The painting is influenced by Philip Guston and Victor Willing, and references lot of my old work,
such as Projector On Landscape. (Again depicting the machine juxtaposed with the plant.)
The space is both interior and exterior.
Towards the bottom left quarter of the painting the
negative space degenerates, or decomposes, into gestural, abstract marks,
perhaps resembling a Faberge egg with roots and a stem appearing. Reading the
painting narratively, from left to right, perhaps this is the birth from the
copulation at the centre. Further to the right beyond the gestural marks is a
blank neutral grey space.
The Box Part 1 retains the definitions and separations of the organic and
technological; it is fundamentally diagrammatical in its use of archetypes,
or opposites. It is a pre-cursor to any form of amalgamation and a stepping
stone between old works and new.
Title:
The title is the name of a track from the 1996 album* ‘In Sides’ by techno producers
Orbital. (It’s cover illustration by Y.B.A John Greenwood) The word Box has
connotations of a blank slate, asks what might be within? Box is an
informal name for a TV or maybe a PC. Solid but unresolved, its form
containing and yet separate from its virtual content. The box is a finite
defined space, part one suggests an incompleteness a conclusion pending.