The work that I’ve been doing has been in the form of drawing installations. I am also a muralist, and the work that I present in the forum of a gallery or museum becomes much like the work I do on a wall in a public building, where I create an environment for the viewer to enter and experience. The work on the walls inevitably is a narrative, one that comes in response to the site, my situation and mentality; the images are screen-printed, collaged and assembled directly onto the wall. I am drawn to making these temporary works of art partly because of my attachment to drawing directly onto a wall, but I also like the fact that these things are forever changeable and very portable, traveling in tubes, and conforming to new spaces, allowing for the context to establish new boundaries or rules. I also like the fact that these installations cost very little for me to make and can still evoke a sense of awe and wonder in the viewer. I am amazed at the possibility of transforma
tion through such low-tech and simple means. The installations are created in parts: I make a series of works on canvas, film, paper or some other mountable substrate, then I collage these works to cover the walls of a gallery, so that they are in effect seamless and act like a potentially very engaging wallpaper. If there’s sufficient time I do the entire piece on the wall, in ink . As a child I would sit for hours creating worlds out of the patterned wallpaper in my mothers’ house, and these works are a continuum of that parallel instinct of dreaming and storytelling. The latest work is inspired by the lives and forms of lichen, the interdependency of the moss and algae, and their ability to survive the harshest of climates with little nourishment. I think this work has a resonance that slices through many boundaries. As an artist that works a lot on the streets, making community art projects with various communities around the world, I’ve been influenced by street
art, graffiti and other forms of guerilla art, for often my work is very spontaneous and is made in response to the surroundings. The over-arching theme endlessly returns, which is that this world, as a great flower, is developing and sustaining despite the havoc wreaked by mankind. The “natural” and manmade, once seen as separate are becoming one and the same: all here will pass, will die and grow again, albeit in a different form; but the real meaning as human beings does come when we stop to focus, and allow ourselves to fall into that flower for at least one brief moment during our hurried and worried existence.
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