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In general, my overall work draws upon several art practices indebted to architecture in some fashion. While one part has been mostly preoccupied with installation another long standing project has represented architecture in photographs. In a slightly different direction is work that integrates both practices.
The photo work begins with the construction of scale models that when photographed appear to represent real architecture. As with my installation work proper, the results represent public and institutional buildings associated with particular historical periods, often displayed within a corresponding or related physical space. A recent installation at the Irish Museum of Modern Art for instance, appeared to restore the gallery space to that of its 19th C. hospital predecessor.
A current photo series -Landmarks of Industrial Britain and a former series Lost Hamilton Landmarks - illustrates my usual practice. Though portraying structures that are seemingly factual on first look, my intent is tied more to the notion of a portrait as opposed to that of either a fanciful, empirical or critical record, but I am not sure that my aims can be neatly summarized. One of the surprises coming out of the Lost Hamilton Landmarks (1995-97) for instance, was the apparent willingness of the viewer to accept a fabricated past. That this could be achieved by simple and unsophisticated non digital means was also of note. Industrial Britain - on the other hand, though heavily indebted to digital editing is more straightforward and more obviously to do with the nature of monumental architectural spaces and ruins.
A guiding theme for this work is the neo-classical architectural language. By suggesting Greek and Roman prototypes (eg. railway stations modeled on baths or city halls on temples), neo-classicism has significantly imprinted 19th and 20thC western culture. Drawing on utopian and inherently conflicted underpinnings, neo-classicism was seen to be a flagship of social revolution (embodying natural ideals as visualized in the classical Greek city state). At the same time, it was also the totalizing vehicle of state power. Its references in this regard were essentially Roman- appealing to state authority and to instinctual desires for permanence and stability, security, sense of place, or even to the desire for the guidance of a parent.
The series (Landmarks of Industrial Britain) imagines a school of monumental public architecture respective of the political, economic and technological upheavals ( the recent availability or labour, brick, iron, glass ) in 19thC Britain- a country that at the time ruled about 1/4 of the earth's land mass and that Marx felt could be the home of the first workers state.
Note: The process I use begins with the physical construction of a small scale maquette. The maquette is then photographed. The series Lost Hamilton Landmarks involves no digital editing. B+W 35mm negs were simply printed on coloured photographic paper. Landmarks of Industrial Britain on the other hand uses medium format negatives that have been scanned and then digitally edited and finally printed on archival inkjet printer. |
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