My work starts with the choice, or recognition, of an object or material. I find things that have fallen out of use and been discarded in the street, in skips, by bins or occasionally in junk shops – things that speak to me of their potential.
I rehabilitate these objects, putting them together to discover relationships between them. I sometimes repair, adjust and paint them. Shapes develop, colours and forms combine, different histories collide and new formal or conceptual meanings evolve. When a work looks or feels ‘right’, I stop, and fix the objects in place.
Why do I do this? Why should you be interested? Art is about transformation as much as anything else. Pigments in a binder are laid down to create images; rock quarried from the earth is turned into sculpture. I transform discarded objects. Such once-used things bring so much with them. They have a past. They have associations. My work deals with formal relationships, but as in all collage, each constituent part has its own history and poetic meaning.
I am making complex stuff that exists simply to be looked at. It’s often additive, sometimes minimal, occasionally it refers to art history and sometimes it may be humorous (to me, at least). It’s all junk, reframed and lovingly restored for our attention. I take all this – and the play that goes into its making – very seriously.