abandoned etchings |

In the early 1970’s David Hockney produced a group of swimming pool paintings in Southern California. The pictures were some of the finest icons of the age, brimming with the confidence of a material world. The paintings have always impressed me with there polished mechanical application of paint, the bright colours, there flatness … but particularly the symbolism inherent in the pieces. The pools spoke of enjoyment, liberalism, capitalism, and an age of leisure. The landscapes I have been working on operate on the other end of the ideological continuum. In a world where ruling ideologies have proven bankrupt my paintings of abandoned, destroyed, and decaying artifices are emblematic of the beginning of this new millennium. The images mostly derived from photo’s taken in travels to Asia and elsewhere tell a tale of consumption overwhelmed by events. In contrast to shiny slick painted surfaces, these prints are etched, torn, eaten, and have been consumed by the processes that make them. Instead of clearly delineated forms the images deconstruct and break apart.

The prints here are part of a larger body of work that include paintings. Below are exclusively prints. Although they fall within the scope of “landscape” they are not traditional landscapes because the existence of hard lines and mechanical patterns are still very evident of an urban sensibility.

The pools formed a significant part of this work, but the theme has been expanded to include abandoned spaces, generally. Still derived from travelling I have come across parade grounds from an authoritarian era, left to grow weeds; I have seen rooms where people were tortured that have been turned into museums, and casinos waiting for demolition. In short they are the archeology of systems of economics and violence that have become obsolete. Obsolesce though does not denote progress or the past, but simpler symbols of ongoing models of exploitation. Somehow in the echoes of what has been abandoned we can find a discourse for dominant modes that are taken as facts.