Disconnection - the relation of representation to the event re-presented

Folk Songs 1- 4 
In the recent Folk Songs decoupages the air of unease is politically and historically referenced. Withers adopts this innocently playful hobby-craft medium, in an act of perverse apparent inappropriateness, to reproduce newspaper images of politically potent events.
Robert Clark mere jelly 2004

I have an interest in paper folding kits, whether a duplicate of Gaudi’s ‘Casa Milla’ or a down load of the ‘Twin Towers’ from the Internet, both examples remain unmade. The notion of making is more rewarding, more enticing than assembling and constructing; completion is not my interest. On my bookshelves, tucked away among the pages of printed books are examples of appealing cut out greetings cards, these use light and shadow to dramatise and sculpt the form. One the same bookshelves I have kept a few ‘pop up’ books from my own childhood. Each ‘Pop up’ is an embodiment of a theater stage where an histrionic story is enacted. 

A declared interest toward craft based materials and DIY hobby project kits give rise to subversive treatment or alteration at the very least. The initiation of an altered method of ‘Artisanship’ is a process of ‘self’ apprenticeship.’ The materials used in hobby sets permit deliberate experimental miss judgments  Injecting and responding to unexpected outcomes while working with craft materials is part of the humanity. An enhanced contemporary gravitas will have been in part stimulated from Folk Culture and Mythology. The work and the constituent of the nature of being are in part illuminated through myth. Arthurian legend for example utilises profound knowledge and esoteric wisdom to convey a story or a cosmic drama that also embodies symbolic messages.

‘Folk Songs’ is a series of four Decoupage works, carefully selected images from real life events that have been subject to exposure in the media. Originated from newspaper cuttings, I have taken out or drawn over the catastrophic event. I may have rubbed out the victim, up-ended the fallen and rendered some images back into a state of some normality. These are small, quiet and fragile paper works that are deliberately made un-sensational albeit the subject matter. The cameo works are ‘stage set’ in large extensive frames. These artworks in a sense weave an abject Faustian* chronicle, an expression and a construction of forms that haunt the past and the present. ‘For myth is the realm of the ambiguous.’(1) They are constructed from fragments of a reality that had no direct bearing on the self. Consequently, the Decline of definition of the ‘true’ language is re-constructed using and imposing an artifice, an impure self-presence that generates self-Illusion. In neurological terms this could be a profound delusion that is akin to form of collective Capgras Syndrome. What one observes is a phantom of the brain. This is no ‘Simon Pure.’(2)


* Faust. Sold his soul to the devil in return for 24 years of additional life during which timer he could indulge in every pleasure and attain all knowledge at this command. Goethe transformed this necromancer into a personification of the struggle between the higher and lower natures of man.
(1) Christa Burger. Thinking Art, ICA 1991
(2) The Real Man, the authentic article.

Folk Songs were exhibited at The Angel Row Gallery 2007 as part of the 'Parade' season of exhibitions.'Terra Incognita' Curated by Indra Khanna. (Follow link below)

Folk Songs 1 (2003)

Folk Songs 2 (2003)

Folk Songs 3 (2003)

Folk Songs 4 (2003)

Protection Bell (Experimental work)

A Near Miss Between a 737 and a Super Stunter (2005)

Forest (2003)

Series 1 No.5

Tree Line a (2007)

Bus Stop (2005)

Pilgrim (2007)

Series 1 No.3

Tree Line b (2007)

25 Cromwell Street (2007)

Grave (2007)

Series 2 No.9

Like Fire (2010)

Walking Man - Sandwhich Box

Hum (1998)

Stencils (2001)

Series 2 No.14

Ex Libris

Moon Rock (2010)

Angel G-BAO-Atuniel (Furnace)

Angel G-OBME

Angel ZK-NZP (Lahash)

Gravities Rainbow


*   Article 104– The size of the stone used in stoning shall not be too large to kill the convict by one or two throws and at the same time shall not be too small to be called a stone

Gravities Rainbow (2009)

Drum


Your drum is as alive as you are. I seek the drum. Upon my drum bestow the mystery All That Is: It is so. Drum is healing
military ordnance

Eight Drum Drawings.
Sleep / Beat / Origin / Ordnance / Altar / Seek / Skin / Stage
The drum skin as replication of human tissue / Paper as Skin / Skin as durable and sensitive surface / Skin - prone to be marked, to be scared, to be split, to be bruised / Marking the skin - placed under pressure, made taught / Drum skin under even tension / Over tighten

The drum as life force - beating rhythm - beating heart - life forces - vibrating air / expelling air - Venting air - rhythmical beat properties / Drum as sound device - Drum as tool for ritual - The talking drum / the silent drum - Expectant / Passive / Paused / In repose

The paper drum - ghosting the original principle.
Material transference - pulped into paper from wood - the transmutation of properties.

Drum modelled upon a 12” Yamaha Maple Custom Tom Tom

Drum (2007)

The Ark of Ills


‘The Ark of Ills’ - A series of digital images. Place + Time + History Their substance includes the self in a process of acting and engagement.  The works are echoes of memory, vibrations of history, journeys of countless possibilities, the disintegration and authentic theater  The images to be exhibited shall be intimate in size but large in scale. To date they have yet to be ascertained for exhibition. I have over 100 images recorded so far and many are still to be taken prior to selection. 

The process involves making paper arks. I have designed a template so that I can make them as and when I require them. For example I took a pre-cut ark to Rome in 2005 and made it up in a hotel room to use during my stay in the city. I had chosen several locations where it was photographed. Subsequently after it had been used the ark was deposited unceremoniously in to a public litter bin. 
One location for the Rome work had been to place the ark in front of the Temple of Caesar; this is located in the Forum Romanum. The temple was built by Augustus after the senate deified Caesar following his death. Caesar’s funeral pyre was speedily constructed out of chairs and furniture hastily brought to bear. Caesar was cremated at the site of where the temple would later be constructed. At the spot people continue to place flowers at the site. I understand why this is the case and wish to return to Rome to do the same at some future date. My intention on this occasion however was to place the ark at the site. Caesar would understand this act of mine I am sure, he would also see the duplicity of the pure fire of cremation and the significance of dumping my homage to him into a public bin, rather than setting it alight in some contrived ceremony. Caesar I believe knew of his destiny on the day of his death. His work incomplete; paused. 

Additional works in the series have involved actions within the studio; these involve interactions between artist and object. The scale of the fragile paper ark against the mythological giant is evident. These echo comparisons between mortals and the immortals, gods such as Zeus who is an all knowing, all seeing god who represents the natural forces that govern lives of men. We are bound and held fast by mortal bodies. 

Furthermore, a series of images of an ark were taken in 2005 of the old family home of some fifty years. This was upon the death of my mother and before the house was duly sold. I shall never return . . . 

The Ark of Ills’ is manifest in the aftershock of man being cast adrift with his self-determination and independent from his creator.

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The Ark of Ills Heliogabalus Date: 26.06.2012 Time: 12.00 Announcement: Bright Phoebus

Act#5 Smote

Act#1.......26..06..2012...time 12.00pm....Burning Glass...PRIMARY Playground

Act#6 Deus Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun)

Act#2 Sage Offering (Salvia Officinalis) Act#3 Deification of Fire

Act#8 Ember / Relic

Act#4 The Cause of all these Ills

Act#9 the Entropic Heat Engine (Testimony)

Making Stencils