Cast Membrane
Mixed media and latex on paper and foam board. 84cm x 119cm. 2020
This piece has been selected for 'Outside the Form', an exhibition curated by Anthoniy Val for the Fringe Arts Bath Festival 2020. Due to Covid 19 the exhibition will postponed till next year, but click HERE to see it on line from 6pm May 22nd to June 7th 2020.
Submission statement for 'Outside the Form':
The piece of work I would like to submit is about a 250-year-old agricultural building which is on the farm in west Cornwall where my family have lived and worked for over 100 years. My earliest memory of it involves going up into its hayloft with my grandfather to feed the last of his hens. A year or two later, my dad knocked out the back wall to extend the building with concrete blocks. It changed from barn to cattle shed. When dad gave up cattle farming it became a store house for tractors and other implements. Since he died it has begun to fall into disrepair. I am planning to change its shape again so that I can live and work in it.
I have been looking at its walls, inside and out. The surface of this building has many colours and textures. Things live and grow on the stone, concrete, wood and metal it is constructed from - plants, insects, molluscs, moss, lichen. There are marks and scratches made by the people that built it and used it and changed it.
To make a record of this surface before it changes again, I took samples, using latex as a medium. As the collection of samples grew, I assembled them in to one piece. It began to feel like making a blanket, or a kind of skin or pelt.
‘Cast Membrane’ is not a representation of the building’s solid form. It is about what it’s changing surface signifies for me. It has brought to mind the way some living organisms must shed their surface membrane before their new form can emerge, like a butterfly’s chrysalis, a spider’s exoskeleton or a snake’s skin.
‘Cast Membrane’ keeps me in touch with the fabric surrounding the building as it is now. In due course, a new surface membrane will grow and surround the walls of the building’s next incarnation, which will be my home.