Wall & Floor Pieces 02–04
The ‘Wall Pieces’, represented as a 'fragment', were the result of an investigation into the Giriama Commemorative Grave Posts of Kenya, which were said, by spiritual elders, to be half buried beneath the ground, in the spiritual world, and half visible above the ground, in the physical world. The earth, like the ‘Walls’, forms a membrane or division of space, substituting the horizontal for the vertical. The holes represent the penetration of the earth by the posts and the spiritual element, whereas the solid materials symbolise the physical and visible. Other metaphorical contrasts within the work emphasizing these binaries, in form or concept, are positive/negative, solid/void, organic/geometric, handmade/industrial, horizontal/vertical, dark/light, as mentioned above.
The three ‘Floor Pieces’ were exploring the idea of above and below, but show a definite progression of deterioration, in the same vein as the concepts for the ‘Wall Pieces’, but on a smaller scale.
Metaphor and reversal are present in the positive and negative (concave and convex) casting of the anaglypta wallpaper, and the presence of holes contrasted with solid matter both from a formal perspective, but also conceptually through the semiotic use of the materials and processes used, forming a transformation and interpretation of the two cultures. The symbolism is revealed to a viewing audience familiar with one set of symbols and associations, whereas in another context, or country, these may be concealed, and therefore not understood. Hence the ‘Wall Pieces’ were constructed with this in mind and form an amalgamation or, hybrid transformation, of cross-cultural elements by the way the materials and techniques were used.
As a development from the full scale sculptural ‘Wall Pieces’ and ‘Floor Pieces’, large-scale photographic images (Lambda digital prints mounted on dibond) were taken from them and depict another form of fragmentation and interpretation of vulnerability through the change of visual scale and surface, creating a feeling of unreality and distortion of the familiar. They conjure up associations of the domestic, which stereotypically provides a sense of security, comfort and familiarity, and yet, the work through this transformation of medium subverts it, with the cracking of the surface, the tearing and layering of the wallpaper, and the emerging earth forms beneath.
Exhibited at Open Sculpture, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol (2003), Spike Island Project Space, Bristol (2004), ‘Concealed/Revealed’ at Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London (2005), Holman, Fenwick and Willan, London (2007).
Funded and supported by AHRB, British Institute in Eastern Africa, CFCU Kenya, NMK.