There is more to say

Last Supper

12 candles are lined up with a gap in the middle; the perfect space for a thirteenth candle. The space is uncomfortable and it is instinctive to try to fill it.

In Sydney one private view guest exclaimed ‘I’m going to fix you’ and placed a beer bottle in the space and grinned, ’job done’. At Art14 art fair a well meaning member of the public started ‘helping’ by moving the candles so they were equidistant. In another instance a couple of older ladies sorted the characters, good on the left and bad on the right, another turned the ‘bad’ characters to the wall.

Each time the piece is exhibited a different selection of candles is used. Each time with the same laws governing who is selected. This piece was shortlisted for Xhibit09. Has been collected by a prominent YBA, a member of Benazir Bhutto‘s family, the editor of LOVE magazine, a well known author and a politician. For list of characters please scroll to bottom of page.

This has won 8 Nobel Prizes

Depending how you feel about chess, the piece can feel intimidating or welcoming. The metal frame infers a glass case, but the sides are open. There is a game in play, the board is high gloss black, but there are no squares, and both sides are white, one soap the other wax. Some pieces do not belong to the chess set; a wax rubber duck and checkers pieces, a soap Monopoly car and house and so on. Each piece has been hand carved (rather than cast) and there is a smell of baby soap emanating from the piece.

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It is a relevant that, at the point of making this piece, this had won 8 Nobel prizes and we do not know what ‘this’ is. The piece relates to game theory, but in some ways this is not important; it is not a necessary understanding. It is enough that the set reflects strategic play (the Paris Open – Advanced), how we feel about that and how the everyday impacts those feelings.

This piece was one of 4 shortlisted for the Clifford Chance Sculpture Award. 2m x 1.35m x 1.35m aluminium frame, wooden table painted with matte white paint and black gloss, ‘chess’ pieces made from Dove soap or candle wax. The piece is in the hands of a private collector.

Careful

Careful is a cube approximately 1.2m square, made from paper and pins and lit from within. There are 140 panels; a few are empty, most are anonymous outlines of an androgynous head and approximately 25 were of ‘famous’ people. Virginia Woolf, King George III, The Mad Hatter, Buzz Aldrin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Stalin, Agatha Christie, John Nash and so on. From the outside the portraits are given dimension by the pins, from within their sharp ends create a different energy. The piece was made for Barmy Park Festival.

Barmy Park

The concept for the festival was to de stigmatize mental health issues by showcasing artists with metal health issues alongside artists who made work about mental health. Artists included Bobby Baker, Valentin Hertweck, Brendan Quick, Hattie Worboys, Ian Bruce and Kim Noble. We worked in collaboration with Core Arts, with the support of Tower Hamlets and Diesel. Curated by Nicole Wassall, Imogen O’Rorke and Aretha Campbell.

Barmy Park brought together over 30 artists. Alongside the exhibition were art performances, artist talks (including one with Kim Noble who has Dissociative Identity Disorder), film screenings, book club, laughing yoga, spoken word evening, and a concert by The Correspondents.

Experimental Clarity

From a distance the piece is reminiscent of an hourglass, the balloons gently move in the breeze, helping to catch people’s eye. There is a white tag that sits uncomfortably, it is blank, but as you lean forward to look you find yourself in an unexpected infinity mirror. The piece has been exhibited at Art 14, Fiumano Projects and Outhere. It consists of an Aluminium frame 1.35m x 1.35m x 2m, two mirrors, two balloons, some string and a white paper tag.

The piece was created for Outhere, an exhibition building on the success of Barmy Park, this time we were joined by Hattie Worboys (who curated the performance element).

Outhere

Artists included Vicky Wright, Geraldine Swayne, Sadie Murdoch and Benedict Dichgans (who exhibited his piece where a man streaks at the Turner Prize and at Tate Britain).

APPENDIX

Last Supper characters (each selection of 12 was made up from the candles listed below)

Alexander Litvienenko, Damilola Taylor (innocent black boy killed by knife crime), Benazir Bhutto, Karol Wojtyła (Pope John Paul II), Andy Warhola, Margaret Thatcher, Muammar Gaddafi, Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussain, Augusto Pinochet, Winston Churchill, Yasser Arafat. Myra Hindley, Mao Tse-Tung, Osama Bin Laden, Vito Corleone (The Godfather)

The royal commission (12 were made up by using the first 3 characters from the Valentines set below)

Marie Antoinette, Martin Luther King, Queen Elizabeth II, King Kong, Prince Charles, John F Kennedy, King George V, Nicholas II of Russia, Michael Joseph Jackson

Valentines commission (by editor of LOVE magazine)

Lady Diana Spencer, Dodi Fayed , Victoria and Albert (Queen and Prince) , Antony and Cleopatra , Pat and Fran Butcher (2 characters from East Enders), Holly and Kit (Badlands), Romeo and Juliet , Grigori Rasputin (Russia’s greatest love machine – according to Bony M), Paolo and Francesca (captured in The Kiss sculpture by Rodin), Bonnie and Clyde , Reginald Kray and Ronald Kray