Cross-currents

Cross-current: – 1. a current in a river or sea flowing across another current. 2. a conflicting tendency moving counter to the usual trend.

These two pieces – Cross-currents and Sea Passage feel in some way separate from my other work despite all the elements having been used in earlier work. The specific mix of textured black clay and smooth white paper clay and use of impressed materials to create surface pattern and texture were used in pieces such as Thorn I and II. The sea motif and use of detritus from previous makings is apparent in Sea Change I and II and Sea Bite.

So perhaps it’s the ideas behind the work that were changing and that I have further developed in my most recent work, Faultlines, making these pivotal pieces, and that is why the name Cross-currents seems so apposite.

On a different note when I exhibit Cross-currents, unless it is very strongly spot lit I think I may need to provide a torch so the interior can be seen. I have included some interior views here and if you look closely at the third one you can see signs I have a little visitor!

Lost trees, rising seas.

‘Ebb Tide’, work in progress.

When starting out on this work I intended combining the urban/industrial with elements of the natural world, envisaging the main signifier as being the tree. To an extent this has happened but as time went past I found that other major signifier of the natural environment – the sea – beginning to seep into the work, evidence of my increasing concern with global warming and rising sea levels.

My worries about the loss of trees showing in the work as exactly that – by impressing hedge cuttings, leaves and seaweed into the clay and removing or burning out these things creating an absence, loss.

Detail, 'Lost', work in progress
Detail, ‘Lost’, work in progress