RAFTS & VESSELS

You cannot enter the room, through the doorway a pale, unruly grid of wooden blocks migrates across the floor, stretching to all corners of the room. It resembles an undulating, bleached mosaic. This sprawling matrix is formed of tiled wooden blocks of different sizes and depths. Although here nothing is large, their sizes vary between 10 cm and 32cm in any direction.

The faded images decorating the surfaces of this disorderly carpet depict empty cardboard boxes their graphic logos and details long lost. They are roughly painted in muted colours from a limited palette. Their contents are absent, and they are viewed from above. They are boxes that kept things safe, kept things secret, carried things, categorised things. They are sloughed husks, now existing as paintings, their past activity unknown. A quiet army of paintings as objects.

 On closer examination it is apparent that the wood has been recycled, evidencing a past life - as a shelf or painting support or printing block. Wood now repurposed or resized from a previous construction. The reverse surface of the blocks demonstrates this hidden history, the top surface on occasion hints at it. Much of the wood has been donated, its provenance and past use unknown in its new home. They are fragments of wood from houses whose occupants’ circumstances and histories are radically different but now here they exist as close neighbours. Pieces of wood from the same timber merchant or supplier, previously geographically far flung are now reunited.

Nothing and everything of value is here.

Detail of Artwork: Oil on board, 2025