RECENT WORK:
TOYS OF INNOCENCE & EXPERIENCE
In the studio & at the Exeter Phoenix
The ‘playful’ artworks use the visual language of children’s toys – exploiting their association with innocence and the untarnished imagination – to provide an ironic and pertinent context for issues concerning contemporary ‘adult’ society. Most of the exhibits can be played with safely and normally by children and adults alike. The title borrows from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience but the idea owes a debt to the Irish author Jonathon Swift and his novel Gulliver’s Travels, which can be read as both an adventure story suitable for children and as an adult satire. The dilemma with satire is that it can be taken literally…
BELOW IS A SAMPLE SELECTION OF THE WORKS EXHIBITED
Marshalling Yard
A Memorial
Kinder Cathedral
‘The Age of Consent’
The six little red cargo boats
All is not what it seems
RUBBLE
The reconstruction puzzle
Miss Willendorf
The Venus or woman of Willendorf dated circa 25,000 B.C.E was found near a village in Lower Austria in 1908. The original stands approximately 100cm high.
‘The scale of it’
The large toy truck is delivering 50% of the world’s wealth to 1% of the population. The Dinky toy and two Matchbox toys are delivering what’s left to the rest of us.
A Dark Place
A Dark Place is a phrase that is a commonly associated with depression. A doll’s house sits on a table. You want to open it and to look inside, but it is secured and impenetrable. You peer though a window. Inside it’s pitch black. After a while your eyes adjust to the darkness and furniture is discernable.
Then a light flashes on in the small bedroom. The source is a smart phone. It is the same size as the toy single bed it rests on. There is a message…
Child’s Play...USA
One of a series of images made from a random selection of children’s building blocks.
Army in a Bag
The trivialization of war in children’s toys: A bag of plastic toy soldiers is accompanied by an identical bag full of the mutilated and charred remains of the same under the heading ‘RETURNS’. “Over 7000 British servicemen have returned home in body bags since the end of the second world war.” (BBC NEWS)
Hanging by a Thread
A puppet play
Illustrated below is a still from the final scene: ‘Dead to the World’
Folly
“Today extreme right wing politics are gaining ground. There are neo-Nazi parties in most of the EU countries promoting an ideology which seems entrenched within the very ‘fabric’ of society…” (The Guardian)
Disposing of the Dispossessed
A Wooden Toy
DUMP TRUCK
Dispersal
The Sycamore Tree DISPERSES the fruits of its labour. In this way unnecessary competition is avoided and the sustaining riches of the earth are shared more equitably. This helps the Sycamore species to survive and thrive; but what of the human species?
50% OF THE WORLD’S WEALTH IS IN THE HANDS OF 1% OF THE POPULATION (Credit Suisse)
A 2023 Oxfam report suggests that it could be 60%
The easy to make Sycamore Helicopter is made from two pieces of cut and folded card glued together. The 5p coin nose weight and dart like form means that the aircraft can be propelled some distance into the air before it begins its slow and meandering descent. Any draft will extend the distance it will fly.
