London is a large part of the fabric of what has as far made
up my experience of life. In my artistic practice it has inspired me in its
everyday comings and goings but especially its history to create a record of it.
The folk tales and histories of London go unnoticed by and
large by the public but the new wave of building in London is rapidly
obliterated the physical record of many of its tales with cooperate glass
towers. This made me move into making historical records with an antiquated technique
but using the preferred material of the contemporary city, glass.
The fragility and transparency of glass is well suited with
my themes due to the tendency of people looking straight through them while
being surrounded by these tales and the short span of time that they are around
before being shattered, removed and built over.
The stories I hope to bring to light are a varied mix of
history, folktales, myth and clear fiction. Each of these have in common
they’re quality in communicating the character of London and the often grim
atmosphere which bubbles just below its street corners. The stories of London
tell just as much about people as they do the city itself as we are defined by
the stories that tell and that we allow to endure. As an example the story of
Sweeny Todd (the demon barber of Fleet Street). The story originate in the
penny dreadful publications which were often reactionary to issues of the day,
the story of Sweeny Todd stems from a real issue at the time of unchecked food
standards where street food often contained a mix of any animal that was
hanging around. From this beginning it has been transformed to fit with the
worries of the new audience for social reform to psychotic revenge it keeps
adapting to its reader experience or fascinations. As my interests lay in
history and the original context of these stories I am in a strange position of
being able to view their modern iterations from the outside and create pieces
which straddle both worlds.
The pieces that I create are affected by this meeting of
past and present in style and process of creation. With the cutting by hand of
the glass panels which is very much an outdated process there is a connection
to the past and at the same time the drawing style is very much a product of
our age due to how much it owes to comic book art with its institution of line
work and a panel based style in the begin of the project. The later three
dimensional pieces are also drawings as would be clear to anyone watching me
wield the pen like glass cutter. This is important to me as although these
pieces could be machine cut to perfection they would lose the human quality
that I want to invoke in the same way that oral tradition and hand written
manuscripts are inherently more personal than the mass printed word. In more
selfish terms I want to chalk my own version of these tales onto the pavement
of history for the reason that I myself love the subject.
