Breaking Bread

T.V.

Turbine

Locus Solus

Nostalgia

Nostalgia I & II; 2003; aluminum, florescent lights, wood products

The Guillotine (1791) and Montgolfier (hot air balloon 1783) came into use within eight years of each other. They are antithetical products of precisely the same moment and circumstances in history, leading to an apotheosis of faith in reason and the ability of science and technology to better existence. The Guillotine and Montgolfier represent the ultimate expression of science and technology of their time.

Pendulum

Pendulum I & II; 2003; steel, video surveillance camera, television and silk stars and stripes.

Palimpsest

Palimpsest III; 2003; Cast-iron sewing machine treadle mechanism, copper, steel, aluminum, painted wood and additional mixed media.

This sound sculpture has a revolving copper disc that is scratched by a stylus attached to a megaphone that produces a range of un-amplified sounds.

The nine intaglio Palimpsest Prints (1997) were printed at regular intervals, following the treadling and sounding of the sculpture. The first print was made after treadling and scratching for five minutes. Each successive print was produced by doubling the previous duration so that images were printed at intervals of five, ten, twenty, forty minutes and so forth, with the final print being the consequence of ten hours and forty minutes of treadling, scratching and sounding. Each print represents the conjunction of sounds and marks with the actions that made them.

Palimpsest Audio

Palimpsest Drawings

Palimpsest Drawings; 1996 to 2002; ink on paper.

These drawings come out of a desire reread certain books that are important to me and to produce work based on close readings of those texts while not revealing their subject or content. They were produced through a procedure of slowly reading though a text and writing verbatim each and every word. The words are densely superimposed and gradually yield a drawing from the text’s illegibility.

Evil Spirits

Evil Spirits I, II & III; 2003; recycled refuse materials, banned books, bibles, document shredder and alcohol still.

Evil Spirits is a construction that suggests a backwoods moonshiner's shanty. It is the locus of clandestine activities. Within this structure is a fully operational alcohol still. There is a document shredder suspended over a large hopper that is filled with the shredded remains of banned books and bibles, whose covers hang from above.

Evil Spirits III, as with its predecessors, address censorship, freedom of choice and the right to privacy. It is a reconfiguration of elements from a project first shown at the PCL Gallery in Sydney,Australia,

Until recently, I had spent six years living and working in Oklahoma, a state identifying itself as part of the religious south and proudly proclaiming itself to be the "buckle of the bible belt". This installation is a response to that experience.

Moral authority and religious zeal combine in virulent ways. Evil Spirits asks when does intellectual and cultural life yield to the moral activist's vigilant and proselytizing gaze? A widening front of individuals and groups take it upon themselves to pry into areas that should remain the supremely private realm of the individual.

Succor Chandelier

Succor Chandelier I; 2003; recycled refuse materials, beach glass, electric lights and photograph.

Succor Chandelier is a simple makeshift shelter, constructed from cast-offs found in and around urban dump sights. Its external form resembles the temporary shelters used by homeless and refugee peoples the world over.

This construction is a meditation on the future but it is also a personal homage to my grandfather, Aristides de Sousa Mendes who was responsible for the largest single rescue act of the entire Holocaust of World War II.

In 1940, Aristides Mendes was a Portuguese diplomat stationed in Bordeaux, France. At great personal risk and peril to his own family he refused the orders of his government by saving the lives of an estimated 30,000 refugees. Succor Chandelier is also a remembrance of Polish rabbi, Chaim Kruger, whose desperation precipitated Mendes’ act of mercy.

The installation is a forward-looking image of hopefulness that refers to the predicament of millions of homeless and stateless refugees around the world today.

Ouroboros

Ouroboros; 2002; cast bronze and cedar wood.

Suspended from a carved cedar lintel, the bell was installed in a deep niche, high on a cliff, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, near Sydney Australia.

An historical note: Ouroboros is the Greco-Egyptian word for a snake that devours it’s own tail.

Bronze bells, in Europe date from the fifth century. By the fifteenth century gunpowder had been introduced to Europe and bronze cannons, were widely used by warring states. This resulted in the growing need for massive quantities of bronze. Military campaigns, such as those of Napoleon and World Wars I & II, left bell towers and steeples gutted and bereft of their bells which were subsequently melted into cannons. In times of peace, cannons were re-melted into bells, always with a net loss in their numbers. Bronze’s alternating existence between bell and cannon has persisted throughout the last several centuries.

In the New World, bells heralded missionary Christendom, and the presence of European culture. Cannons in the New World served the installation of imperialism and the subjugation of indigenous peoples. Both cannon and bell are an integral part of the history of colonialism.

Oblique Discourse

Oblique Discourse, was a site-specific work near Sydney, Australia. It appropriates and recontextualizes Hans Holbein’s anamorphic rendering of a skull as found in The Ambassadors, National Gallery, London). It is here used as a disguised memento mori whose shadow is cast upon an oceanside pathway frequented by young joggers and the most affluent of Sydney

Sub Rosa

Sub Rosa; 2001; welded steel, leather and potted plants.

Sub Rosa, was a direct response to my having lived and taught for six years in the Bible Belt of the Midwest, under the constant threat of censorship and the moral activists vigilant gaze. Its subject deals with my identifying that which would be most inflammatory to the moral activist; sexual pleasure and preference. This would therefore compel them to intervene in areas that should remain within the supremely private realm of the individual.

I then set about to make a work that would specifically reference “deviant” forms of pleasure while succeeding at making that part of the work invisible.

The specific subject and content of this work is shielded from the moral activist’s gaze. The object appears to be an ordinary wrought-iron potted plant. If one removes the plants, it may be inverted on pivots. The work then reveals itself to be a non-gender-specific apparatus for sexual bondage.

Readings

Until 2001, I had spent six years teaching at the University of Oklahoma. As a newcomer, in the midst of an exceedingly conservative faculty, I felt myself to be very much under the microscope. I usually prefer to hold my cards close to my chest, so I developed a strategy that would enable me to produce work, reread certain texts that had long been important to me and not reveal the specific content of my work.

The process went as follows: I began by rereading a particular text and writing it verbatim upon a single sheet of drawing paper, until it became densely superimposed as a palimpsest. This quickly rendered the text into complete illegibility. As I identified passages of the text in question that stimulated further consideration, I would deeply and repeatedly carve this text into poured volumes of plaster, until I began to develop a personal response and understanding of the text’s significance. Taking large inflatable children’s toys, such as beach balls, I would subsequently write my thoughts regarding the carved text in extemporaneous and diaristic ways, also achieving a dense superimposition of the text, to prevent its being read. At this point, during my writings upon the inflatable objects, I began to develop ideas for specific objects. These objects were placed in very close proximity to the text that had ultimately provoked them.

P.S.I.

P.S.I. was a site-specific sound installation at Process Support International. P.S.I. is a small and somewhat chaotic company that is a world leader in reconditioning silicon wafer reactor furnaces. During a two-week period, in 2000, I constructed an acoustic environment to be listened to in the company CEO’s private office and employees’ lunchroom. Nearly fifty microphones were strategically placed throughout P.S.I.’s production areas, staying away from where workers conversed. These sounds were mixed into a live stereo collage that appeared to give the CEO some sense of surveillance over the degree or worker’s productivity, without revealing its precise source. In the CEO’s office, there was a surveillance camera and microphone focused at his desk. All of the CEO’s movements, sounds and conversations were channeled through a video monitor into the lunchroom where employees could closely watch their employer.

Circle & Slash

Critual

A performance installation, with Graham Budgett, at St. Martin's School of Art, London 1978.

Pyramids

Stockwell Depot

There is a black mirror in my heart