This photograph shows a pair of walking boots with their laces extended away from them.
I took the photograph when I noticed the boots on the floor (they are my boots). The laces and the lighting from the window create a strangely unsettling effect, to me at least.
The photo was taken while I was visiting Oban in Scotland – on the same visit as this slightly surreal photograph.
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A photograph of two people standing in a way that makes their heads seem to merge in an unsettling and humorous way.
The bizarre, surreal effect of the photograph is enhanced by the uniform bright red background and the colour and style of the clothing. The glasses help as well. The photograph was taken on a ferry between Oban and the Isle of Mull in Scotland, May 2018.
An abstract sculpture exploring the effects of light using a translucent resin sphere on the top of a marble column.
In the photograph the sculpture is positioned on a slate base against a rough painted granite wall to give the work a robust organic feel.
A video of a field of buttercups that contains a hard-to-see object near the centre-left.
The object is revealed at the end of the video.
The video is on a recurring theme in my work – an investigation into perception, reality and illusion.
The video was taken behind my house at Lower Rosemorran, Zennor, in Cornwall.
Spoiler alert – the nature of the object in the video is revealed in the next section.
The scene in the video contains, on the ground amongst the grass and buttercups, a square mirror. The mirror is hard to see partly because of the distracting proliferation of buttercups, but mostly because the mirror is positioned so that the light from the sky doesn’t create give-away shadows or highlights (buttercups that are reflected in the mirror can look abnormally lit compared with the rest of the buttercups if the angle of the light is incorrect).
Below is a photograph of the wider field in which the work took place.
The work is filmed in an almost cliched, very peaceful and calming field full of spring flowers, which to me makes a nice setting for a work that at its most pretentious can be interpreted as being a prompt for questioning the nature of reality. At its least pretentious however, it’s just a nice visual joke.
Mirrors and reflections have been a common features of my work for many years, with the first probably being this artistic experiment from about 1970.
A slightly surreal, slightly disturbing (to me) anthropomorphic photograph of a kitchen sink. The texture of the sink’s surface along with the staining round the plug hole and the shape and position of the overflow give this image an anthropomorphic quality in which the plug hole may be an eye while the overflow could be a nose or a mouth (or a mixture of both). If this sink does indeed resemble a human face the fact that the face only has one eye in the centre of its head suggests a cyclops.
The plug hole and overflow can also be seen as being suggestive of other human orifices of course.
An abstract watercolour painting that plays with the tension between the absolute stable state of a circle and the chaotic state of the rest of the image.
The perforations along the edge of the paper are an integral component of the composition, being part of the disruptive tension the work.
A ceramic sculpture that is slightly suggestive of a fungus such as a stinkhorn, although the work was conceived as a purely abstract sculpture.
Below is a view of the sculpture from above, in directional lighting. This view shows well the dramatic differences that differing viewpoints can make when viewing three dimensional artwork (or anything else for that matter).
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A group of works composed of clusters of coloured ceramic cone-like forms.
The forms are individually rolled by hand as cones and are then distorted to create a sinuous waving effect.
The forms were conceived as purely abstract, however they have an organic feel to them with something of the suggestion of marine or aquatic organisms. They could be worm-like creatures emerging from the sea bed and waving in the ocean currents.
I like to sit down with a sketchbook every so often and draw whatever comes into my head. Surreal objects with bird-like features are a recurring theme. These slightly surreal dancing teapots are a good example.
A surreal or dada found object sculpture made from a cobbler’s shoe last with a cigarette inserted into the circular hole in the last that is designed to accommodate a handle. The last is mounted on a lamp stand.
The sculpture utilises the human sensory condition known as pareidolia, the interpretation of shapes as human faces, to create a surreal head. Pareidolia is essential for the interpretation of a lot of art, especially art in which faces are merely suggested by, say, a few strokes of a paintbrush. In some art pareidolia is actually a curse though – think of the number of abstract images that are ruined when you see an unintentional face in them.
The sculpture’s title, Last Cigarette, utilises the human tendency to reinterpret words to create puns – in this case the word ‘last’ referring to the wooden cobbler’s last, meaning that the cigarette is the last’s last cigarette.
A small abstract contemporary sculpture created by casting the interior of a coffee filter cone.
The work is deliberately created in a slightly crude style (notice the imperfections in the base).
The sculpture is painted in bright colourful primary colours, with the main surface of the sculpture painted blue while. he grooves in the sculpture (created by the ridges in the coffee filter cone) are in red or yellow (with a couple of white ones too).
The sculpture has an overall positive feel to it, caused partly by the bright colours and partly by the simple conical shape with its grooves.
The image above is a detail from an abstract moving image work from a series in which multiple copies of a single geometrical shape are animated to interact with each other using simple computer algorithms, creating extremely complex shapes. See the video below for the full animation.
The animation is an attempt to link contemporary art and science by showing the way in which complex forms are generated from simple forms, which is one of the fundemental underlying principles of the structure of the universe (where the component parts of atoms such as electrons and protons are composed of even simpler entities, which themselves are composed of even simpler entities, which in turn…).
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This abstract composition is a study in confinement, with the geometrical forms in the composition seemingly squeezed into the space within the composition. The angled square in the composition touches each side of the frame, which itself is a square. This adds to the composition’s sense of confinement as the image has no specific top and bottom and can be viewed in any orientation, giving the impression of ‘no way out’. Not only that, but the square format suggests that the enclosed square and its accompanying circles can almost possess a degree of freedom of movement by being able to rotate within the frame – a form of movement that in reality possesses no more freedom than does the movement of a hamster in a wheel.
The limited colour palette of red, black and blue gives the composition a certain amount of tranquility, while the combination of colours also gives the work a dynamic quality.
This video shows the way in which familiar objects can become disconcertedly unfamiliar and alien by removing them from their normal context.
It shows a video of a hand in which the video is split and flipped as a mirror image in order to create a strikingly bizarre image resembling an unsettling and disturbing alien creature.
The video is an attempt to highlight the way that even the things that we treat as totally normal and mundane are in fact full of strangeness and wonder.
By using the very simple mirror image technique I’ve made something that’s as ridiculously familiar to us as our hands look ridiculously alien and disconcerting. Who’d have thought that you had such strange alien things stuck on the ends of your arms?
A piece of abstract digital animation that uses my technique of overlaying multiple copies of the same image made to move relative to each other in simple ways and to interact with each other so that, for instance, the colour displayed in the resulting image changes.
This “starburst” animation is composed of multiple overlaid copied of a 36 pointed star.
A key motive behind these video animations is the linking of art and science through the exploration of the creation of complex forms from the interaction of simple forms, with particular reference to the creation of the incredible complexity of the universe from its incredibly simple building blocks. There’s more about this here: Complexity from simplicity: contemporary artworks.
A detail from an abstract moving image work from a series in which multiple copies of a single shape move and interact using simple computer algorithms, creating complex shapes. The series is inspired by my interests in art, sciennce and philosophy
In this work each individual ‘entity’ is composed of multiple versions of a very simple star shape that is modified in size and colour to create a complex star form. Smaller clones of this star form are then ejected from the original star form, in an action that suggests the birth of new stars, the creation of matter in the universe or the evolution of self-replicating life-forms (hence the link between art and science).
To see higher resolution videos and more information about this series click here.
A very short video capturing the motion of water as it is ejected in pulses from a conventional garden hose spray nozzle with the head set to different spray modes.
The brevity of the water pulses makes it possible to see patterns in the spray that are normally concealed or are absent when the water is ejected as a constant flow.
This phenomenon is possibly a good starting point for a fountain or other water-based art installation.
This video, titled Spyk, was exhibited in the London Group open exhibition, 7th November to 1st December 2017.
The video is from my series of videos in which multiple copies of relatively simple forms are rotated at different rates to each other, thus generating complex forms. There are more of them here.
The video was displayed at the London Group Open in 2017. London Group was founded in 1913 by a group of artists including Lucien Pissarro, Henri Gaudier Brzeska, Jacob Epstein, Walter Sickert, Duncan Grant and Wyndham Lewis. Its aim was to be an artist-based group that could act as a counter-balance to establishment institutions such as the Royal Academy. Current members include artists such as Frank Bowling RA, Anthony Eyton RA and Dame Paula Rego.
To see higher resolution videos and more information about this series click here.
I’ve been producing art dealing with environmental concerns since the 1970s.
The simplicity of construction of this piece is important. The observer will hopefully notice the almost total lack of endeavour required to create the work, while also noticing the (hopefully) relatively high aesthetic payoff as a result of that endeavour.
A lot of land art and other art in the environment strive to use only natural ingredients in the composition of the art, good examples being the work of Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy. This work however consciously uses artificial material in the form of nylon paracord.
In the work the placing of brightly coloured plastic into the environment refers partly to humanity’s imposition of artificiality onto the natural world. This is partly a message about the despoiling of the environment by our endeavours. The fact that the nylon cord has been simply laid on the boulder (which took the effort of a whole three minutes) helps to reinforce this message, as the cord acquires qualities associated with the detritus of our instant gratification throw-away consumer culture. The fact that the cord is plastic reinforces this further. However, the brightly coloured plastic actually looks quite pleasing on the rock, so the work is also saying that humanity’s imposition of artificiality onto the environment may have a positive side to it, at least to us (but also that just because something looks nice doesn’t necessarily mean that it is).
In fact, where would we be without the artificiality that we impose on the environment? Hence some of the ambiguity in this piece.
The rock is on low heathland behind my house at Rosemorran, Zennor, near St Ives, Cornwall.
A digitally created geometric abstract work consisting of diagonals and circles.
In this work I was chiefly concerned with the effect of creating discontinuous diagonals. The circle helps to focus the attention onto the centre of the image, where all of the action is taking place, as well as adding a degree of three-dimensionality and formal variation to the image.