Escape!

My current practice involves me creating a door, the aim is to represent a whole
world to be discovered, a lifeline and guide to many corridors in life and theoretically the idea of a more utopian reality. The practice I pursue is to offer assurance that you might find yourself travelling down endless corridors but you‘ll never know what‘s right around the corner. Also I aim for people to realise that its not the appearance but what’s inside which matters. It is for my audience to determine what lies behind my door, I hope for it to ask questions of people and also offer them a mental escape. In my work I want people to believe in what they see; I want people to have faith in the images and instillations that I present.

I plan to make a large installation in the gallery. I’m looking to create a site specific piece of art to express my personal feelings, reflecting this to my audience and connecting with them.I will create the illusion of a small doorway along the gallery wall, creating a realistic exit. The door will make it feel like an escape. People should wonder, what’s behind that door? The door will invite people to interact with freely and for audience interaction purposes have a lock with several keys available to unlock it. Also I’ve looked at the possibility of producing a smaller installation; similarly creating an illusion, however this time I would make an air vent. It would be positioned high on one of the gallery walls. I would also place step ladders near the vent to create visualisations of escape.

Front covers of our lives.

Potentially I can see a vision of the future where we all get what we desire. We already have the ability to drift away in our imagination. I believe that the day will come when our dreams can easily become reality. Leading on from my architectural study I continued my practice with the vision of a utopian escape. After influence from urban exploration and studies I pinpointed a common feature. A front door. I thought about what these doors represented and what they have experienced? Our Psyche takes us down different paths and through many doors. A door is the metaphor for our lives they represent new beginnings and endings. I’ve focused my priority on the heritage and history of doors. I’m interested in the life that a door has lived. Mostly I’ve been visiting and documenting doors of my particular interest and analysing their value. There is no definition for a door because they all represent a different way of life, and everybody owns a door. Doors live with us through our lives and memory expressing our personalities. A door is not simply a plank of wood or a cut of PVC but a guardian, frame and front cover for our lives.

Red House Park, Great Barr, Birmingham.

My desire is to help people learn the value of opportunity and chance, many elements of life are overlooked and often as humans we underestimate the chances we are given. Everybody takes chances some work out and others don’t, It’s the realisation that another will come along that I stress in my practice. The idea I follow is that one door leads to another. There are always options and various avenues. My practice hopefully spells out opportunity, development and chance. Every fantasy takes you somewhere new, we do not know where we may end up.

Red Tape...

HND/HNC show at the New Walsall Art Gallery comes up at the end of June through to the beginning of July. Red Tape is the title for our show. The title defines issue's of all our work. I've started to plan my contribution. As you already know I have a strong interest in redundancy and abandonment issues, I’ve worked on these themes for a while progressing from neglection in people, electronics and more recently architecture. After my original research and exploration I early on determined an area of work I would like to pursue. I knew I wanted my practice to link with property and architecture so I took this direction. Urban exploration has been my general driving point, exploring and documenting my discoveries. My expeditions lead me to many redundant buildings. I was spurred on at the time by a national study in the Daily Mail newspaper where it claimed Walsall was listed number two in the section for large centre shop closures. It had a percentage of 26%. I wanted to see this, so I decided to discover it for myself.