Friday 27 January 2012

Constellations. York College Gallery. 12th May - 7th June

The titles of these drawings refers not to ‘constellation’ in its 
celestial sense, being a group of stars that form a recognisable 
pattern, but rather a group of associated or similar people or 
things. 


This group of recent small scale  drawings are 
not the result of a narrow thematic investigation, focused on 
any one particular subject. They function instead as a visual 
stream of consciousness where connections are made between 
drawings that generate alternate readings and prompt a related 
set of images that continue the process. 


Between fifteen and twenty 13cm x 20cm drawings on found books are worked on together 



in order to maximise the potential for each image to subtly alter 
those around it, like a visual virus, resulting in images that have 
evolved substantially from their origins.

A selection of paintings from these drawings can be seen at York College gallery from May 12th to June 7th 2012.

Saturday 14 January 2012

Predicting the past/Waldsee. Graphite, bleach and ink on found books. 2011/12

In the Summer of 1944, recently deported Jews sent postcards to Budapest from a place called Waldsee.  The postcards were handed to the Jewish Council in Budapest to be distributed to the addressees. "I am doing fine," the cards read. "I am working," or "I have arrived safely. I have got work in my occupation," or "Follow us here!"
Those who received a postcard from Waldsee searched for it on a map and easily found a place with this name. More than one, in fact; there was a "Waldsee" in Austria and in Switzerland. One of the leaders of the Hungarian Jewish Council, Fulop Freudiger, helped to distribute the postcards. It was he who noticed that on one of them, the word "Waldsee" was imposed over another name ending in "witz." Only later, at the end of June, would he fill out the remainder of the obscured postmark: Auschwitz.
These six drawings are based upon collages from as many examples of “Waldsee” tourist locations in Europe that I could find on the internet. Mimicking the original lie, they are fictions of a romantic rural idyll that depict simple pleasures at odds with the reality behind the original postcards.