the writing on the wall
statement

 

    This work grew out of images initially recorded for 'Lipstick Traces'. Tags are the spray-painted personal identification graffiti consisting of a 'nick' or 'tag' name. I am interested in this form rather than the more elaborate drawn out and filled in variety. I am sure that, paradoxically, something can be two or more mutually contradictory things simultaneously. For me tags are at one and the same time vandalism (I would hate, for example for it to be done to my home), and also can possess an underlying beauty, a linear fluidity deriving from the gestural movement of the spray can. The teasing out of this beauty, through re-contextualising and  further development is what I am attempting with this work.

    The series consists of photographs, prints and relief structures. The photographs crop the image to isolate it by excluding the visual jumble of its surrounding environment. For the 'Wall Painting' series of digital prints images were manipulated in Photoshop to improvise a different, more painterly, quality. The relief structure studies were arrived at through tracing the tags from a number of photographs then playing about with them to achieve composite forms. Just two of these, yellow one and green one, have been made thus far. The intention is to not only complete the set on this scale but also to have large scale laser cut ones also

    The Che Guevara image isn't strictly speaking a tag at all, I found on an underpass wall and liked the way it was sat next to a previously painted out image. It is likely that this is now also overpainted as many of the other images could be.

                     Many of the pieces were shown in my exhibition 'I Was There' at The Vortex Jazz Club, London in 2013