A proposal for a mural applied directly to an art gallery wall.
I’ve been experimenting with subjects that are suitable for murals on gallery walls for several years.
The proposed mural is of a group of semiabstract figures with linked hands. The anatomy of the figures is ambiguous. Are the circular objects at the top of the figures their heads, or are those some form of decoration? Are the large white circles eyes, and are the various indentations mouths?
This proposed mural is based on a cartoon about fleeing environmental catastrophe that I drew in about 1991.
The image depicts a Western family fleeing a ravaged land that is piled with the detritus of the consumer society. The family is fleeing in a builder’s skip or dumpster, which ironically is a symbol of consumerism in that skips can often be seen outside houses here in the UK while the owners of the houses have new kitchens installed to replace their perfectly good old kitchens. There are several skips in my street as I write this.
When I first drew the cartoon about thirty years ago the concept of fleeing environmental disaster by boat was a novel idea with little or no link to actual events in the real world. The journey in the cartoon was symbolic. Now in the 2020s everything has changed, with boats constantly crossing the Mediterranean Sea and the English Channel carrying migrants from countries that are affected by climate change and other environmental and social pressures.
It’s interesting that if the mural depicted in this photograph was a cartoon in a magazine it would be looked at for a couple of seconds at most and then passed over. Enlarged onto a gallery wall the image may attract attention for noticeably longer and would magically attain a higher status.
I’ve drawn environmental cartoons since the 1970s. My environmental cartoons have been published widely, including in publications such as the Guardian newspaper and the Critic magazine. A book of my environmental cartoons, When Humans Roamed the Earth, was published by WWF/Earthscan in 1992.
In the Beginning: complex patterns generated from simple patterns
Abstract digital animation 2015
This work is a an animation composed of overlapping identical grids of hexagons rotating relative to each other. The piece works on a similar principal to Moiré patterns, however the results are made more complex by the inclusion of simple computer algorithms that make the patterns in the grids interact with each other so that, for instance, where black areas overlap each other they turn white.The work is a relatively fast and dynamic work from the series. Others are slower and more meditative.
The work is from a series that explores the generation of complexity from simplicity and is ultimately concerned with the visualisation of the basic underlying nature of the universe (which by its nature must be very simple) and the way that it gives rise to the immense complexity that we see around us.
Contemporary art sculpture/installation. January 2017
I’ve been creating environmental art in one form or another since about 1970. This work is a development of a previous work from the late 1980s.
The work is a sculpture showing how I feel the human race is treating the environment – by putting the planet into the rubbish bin. The sculpture consists of a standard kitchen waste bin, lined internally with very matte black material and with a back-lit image of the earth at its base. The result is the illusion that by looking into the bin you are looking into outer space as though through a porthole in a spacecraft, with the earth floating in the distance. It’s surprisingly effective. The kitchen waste bin was deliberately chosen as the reciprocal that contains the earth because of its banality, to emphasise how we are causing environmental damage by depleting the earth’s resources through mundane consumption.
A version of this work was shortlisted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2022 and was exhibited in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, the same year.
This work is a slow moving animation that repays close attention. At first you may think that the animation isn’t working, but after three or four seconds you will notice the changes that are occurring to the complex inner structure of the work. It is composed of overlapping identical grids of hexagons rotating relative to each other. Simple algorithms make the black and white areas on the grids interact with each other so that, for instance, where black areas overlap they turn white. The work is deliberately slow to give it a meditative quality. Other works in the same series are faster and give a more dynamic effect.
The work is part of a series called In the Beginning that explores the generation of complex patterns from simple patterns or forms as a metaphor for the creation of complexity within the physical universe from what must by definition be extremely simple beginnings.
An example of the same concept by different artists.
Drawing. 2019. Photo: Harrison and Wood, Frieze, London. 2022
An example of different artists thinking of the same idea independently. My cartoon drawing is a joke about text-based art from a book of cartoons that I produced on the subject of contemporary art and humour in 2019 ( See here ). The photograph is of a sculptural text-based work by Harrison and Wood that was exhibited at Frieze London in 2022.
An artist’s impression of one of my Emergent Pattern artworks as it would appear displayed on an art gallery wall. The work is composed of two identical grids of black lines that are one above the other and that are at an angle to each other. Where the lines on the two grids cross each other the black lines cancel out and are replaced by white. The result is that the overlapping grids create complex emergent patterns.
The generation of these patterns is in some ways analogous to the generation of Moiré patterns or fringes. They are much more complex than Moiré patterns however, as Moiré patterns are created by the simple overlaying of lines without the additional operation of modifying the areas where they overlap.
The artwork is inspired by my fascination with optics and optical effects and my interest in both art and science.
Card, acrylic paint, LED light source. 30x15x20cm. 2022.
A light source shining on painted and folded card cut-outs in the form of rings. The shadows cast by the light shining on the rings form half of each full ring on the base of the artwork. The video above shows the light turning on and off to show the effect. An example of contemporary light sculpture. The piece is deliberately low-tech, using a cheap commercial table lamp as a light source and simple folded card.
An abstract painting composed of black lines and areas of colour. The framework of black acrylic lines was painted first, quite quickly and spontaneously. The coloured areas were added to this superstructure later after experimenting with their positions.
A sketch of a leaping male figure with antlers. I’ve drawn several images featuring men who have antlers growing from their heads. They are something to do with the concept of alpha males, or males who try to pass themselves off as alpha males. Linked to concepts of freedom and over-reaching ambition.
Drawing from the imagination. Pencil on paper. 21.3.2022.
Drawings from my sketchbook. Imaginary creatures consisting of spheres with anatomical features such as wings or legs recur quite often in my work. I like the way that in anatomical terms a sphere can be both a head and a body at the same time. This is a drawing from the imagination (obviously), drawn during a spare moment over a coffee in a cafe.
I frequently draw imaginary heads in unusual situations. On two of these ‘spider heads’ I’ve turned the hair on the heads into long spider legs, with the heads forming the anatomically incorrect spiders’ bodies. I think the spider legs in these sketches probably owe something to the spiders of Louise Bourgeois. The spiders may also be influenced by the work of Symbolist artist Odilon Redon, whose The Crying Spider has definnite similarities, although I don’t remember having seeing it before I drew my sketch. I did read a book about Symbolism back in the 1970s, Dreamers of Decadence by Philippe Jullian, so maybe it was in that (When I say I read the book, I mean that I looked at the pictures). Like many of my imaginary sketches these were drawn over a cup of coffee in a cafe.
I often carry a sketch book with me in case I have a free moment when inspiration strikes. I drew this in a cafe over a cup of coffee. It incorporates several motifs that recur in my work (spheres and arms and legs). I think that the idea is that the imaginary creature in the drawing moves forwards by rolling from leg to leg rather than by swinging its legs as we do. Like most of my work, it’s purely from my imagination (and the imaginations of artists and illustrators that I’ve seem previously and that have seeped into my subconscious).
I frequently draw sketches from my imagination with little or no preconceived idea about what I’m going to draw. This is one of them. These ideas frequently reappear at a later date as part of a more finished concept.
Pen and ink drawing with digital additions. This version: July 2022.
This print shows a dandelion seed head, or dandelion clock, with one of the seeds in flight. The seed resembles a human figure. The image could be symbolic of freedom, although the slightly sinister nature of the image makes this ambiguous.
A sculptural piece consisting of toy plastic hands ( sometimes known as finger hands) attached to wooden spheres. The hands are almost the only anatomical feature possessed by the spheres. This makes their function ambiguous – are they actually hands, or are they feet?Or even wings? The ‘creatures’ in the procession are quite unsettling. Their lack of anatomical features other than hands gives them the impression that they are crawling clumsily and blindly forward. Other artworks in this series feature these objects suspended by thread on a mobile. In these works the hands unmistakably also function as wings. In the natural world the wings of birds and bats have evolved from hands (or front feet, which are what hands have evolved from), so the idea of hands being used as wings is far from far-fetched. This work is partly inspired by my interest in evolutionary science and the natural world, and partly by my interest in the bizarre and the ambiguous.
The Oppressor Impaled by the Oppressed. Hammer and nails sculpture.
Hammer, nails. This version, May 2022. Original concept, 2010.
This sculpture is partly a metaphor for oppression and rebellion. The work shows a hammer nailed to a surface by nails. Part of the concept behind the sculpture is that the hammer is being impaled by the objects that it normally hits. How did the nails manage to impale the hammer? Were the nails hammered into the hammer by another hammer? In that case the nails are not necessarily a metaphor for the oppressed rising up to overthrow their oppressor (the hammer) using their own power, but are more like the followers of another power (another hammer?) that may turn out to be as oppressive as the hammer that’s been overthrown. The use of handyman’s tools such as hammers, pliers and spanners is a recurring feature of my artwork.
The work in my solo show at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall, 2022
Metamorphosis (from pie containers to insect larvae)
Wood (recycled food containers). 2021.
An assemblage or sculpture fabricated from recycled wooden pie containers. The pie containers, for Charlie Bigham pies (mainly fish pies with the odd cauliflower cheese in there), are stacked as curved forms suggestive of insect larvae such as caterpillars or grubs. Insect larvae undergo metamorphosis when they change into the imago or mature form of the insect. Here the pie containers have undergone a similar metamorphosis by turning into the insect larvae.
This work reflects my interest in the natural world and the environment, as well as my concerns for environmental issues caused by human activity (this work being an example of recycling or upcycling of consumer waste). An example of art made from scrap material. A form of arte povera perhaps.
A sculpture or assemblage composed of G clamps. G clamps are usually used for holding work together temporarily, such as when components are being glued together. Here the G clamps are holding on to each other so that they are part of a structure themselves rather than an instrument for creating a structure. The angle of the piece gives the structure a feeling of instability. This could have allusions to the instability of the modern world that we have constructed through our use of industry and technology, where the very means by which we have constructed our world leads to its inherent precariousness, especially now that we are inflicting such serious damage on the environment.
