Elevated Railway 2007
Enamel, masonite and perspex on board
150cm x 150cm
Over the last years my work has questioned the boundary not only between high art and the amateur or postcard photo, but also between sculpture and painting. My works are constructed of plywood, perspex, cardboard boxes, old signs and found plastic tiles and sheets. The surfaces and materials have their own history, of trade, industrial sites and the local hardware. These histories often bear a direct relation to the content of the work. For example, my series based on ports was constructed, in part, from the detritus of the ports. Spatially, the works are varied: they privilege the surface, but at the same time play upon traditional perspective.
My work has always straddled painting and the constructed object. In the past, my materials have added to the narrative content, or sometimes to the context, of the depicted scenes. My recent work has explored this relationship between material and subject, between constructed object and painted surface, in a more abstract way. The subject matter, from wharves to cars, from chairs to landscape, helps explore these binary concerns and is treated in a highly architectural and linear way.
Blue
Bollard I, 2005
Enamel, masonite, persex and plywood on board
90.0 x 90.0 cm
Potsdam 2007
Enamel, masonite and perspex on board
120cm x 120cm
To read my works, the viewer is asked to respond to different rhythms set up in the work. Colour is a major element and is used to link and confuse the various surfaces. The approach to panelling in the surface creates its own connections among the parts of the painting. Sometimes a sign is left unpainted or perhaps a totally abstract panel is tacked on, without any connection to the figurative drawing. The arrangement of the panels is another level on which my paintings seek to balance elements, removed from the realistic content. So to understand the work the viewer should oscillate between the abstract and the figurative, the constructed object and the painterly surface and the use of colour to describe and erase.
Jasper Knight, Sydney, 2005