Eikõn & Klan
the bemuseitudes
Flesh to Cloth
Fabric and drapery are a staple artistic trope, a recurring creative marker used throughout the history of art to test an artisans' skill and their ability to convey, through the material's folds, bodily form and movement, subsequently gesture and narrative. These materials mediated the intentions of the body, and can therefore embody Western Art's historical striving towards greater realism in its primary servitude to the church and the communication of its faith.
The fabric here seems set, folds freed from service but suspended in gestures they once held, no longer bound to forms they need reveal or to narratives they're shaped to preserve.
what matters is immaterial /what matters is in material /what matter is is immaterial
detail. vinyl print 2019
Flesh to Cloth, fibre-based handprints, dimensions variable, 2021
What Matters Is Immaterial…, fibre-based print, 2020
Surplus of Glory
Gicleé prints, 12 x 10’’, 2020
Digitally montaged appropriated imagery of limewood sculptures from Renaissance Germany. These faceless figures lack the specifics of identity yet suggest some kind of bodily excess, more human than should be possible. Their cut up and reconfigured emphasis on touch - empirical physical contact - contrasts with the faith based on theological abstractions in which they were originally created. I worked on these images throughout the first lockdown with its ongoing prohibitions around contact – the heightened implications of touch and being touched gave them an additional sense of isolation or sufficiency in a reeling world.
…said the Fig Tree
Cast tin, dimensions variable (within the general parameters of ‘fig-sized’), 2019
The fig tree is a recurring symbol in the Bible used to signify prosperity, provision, and security, particularly with regards to God's chosen or protected people. Among these tin cast figs the occasional finger tip or thumb pushes outwards from within the fig's flesh. The human embedded within the construction of the form serves as a reminder of the human presence shaping the narrative and ideologies the symbol came to serve.
Eikõn unBecoming
C-type Lambda print, 2019