Sunday 2 February 2020

Winter 2019 / 2020 Statement


This last winter I have been living back in my childhood village, working for a family that installs solar panels, and other energy appliances, around Bedford. I have been using a makeshift studio that I put together in a barn, on a farm complex in the next town along. Trying to mimic these various devices that we have been installing, from scrap material and copying basic components, fluorescent pink antifreeze which transports heat within the solar thermal system, and falling into a youtube depth of various niche energy production (algae farms) or energy reduction options, wireless communication systems - signal flags or optical telegraphs which glinted encoded messages from watchtower to watchtower across distances. Over the last 4 or 5 years working as part of tangled groups on various projects, with Limbo, a space we opened in 2015 to practice working collaboratively and between different disciplines and the last two years working directly together with Victor Ruiz Colomer, the things I am trying to bring together for the Fringe Festival in MK have come from the most detached working environments I have experienced. Because they haven't developed around people, I've been trying to find new variables in the sculptures themselves, that push against this singularity, elements that could leak, sprout, bloom, get out of my control. I've been trying to work as quickly as possible, using moss instead of buying silicone filler. They go into an incubation stage, outside for the next months and I will refurbish them in June.