Spring

Spring was made as part of my residency and solo show Imagining the Fluidity of Permanence (an exchange between a 21st Century artist and a 17th Century building), at Casa Regis, Italy, curated by L. Mikelle Stanbridge. 

During my explorations of the site, the curtains called out to me from a pile in a corner. I was interested in the contrast between the beauty of the historic building and the relatively recent, synthetic fabric of the curtains, and the question of where they had belonged or been used in the space. I wanted to give them another life by moving them around the building, parading them like a banner, and promoting them from something that frames the view through a window, into a frame for something unexpected, or an object of focus in themselves. 

These actions are typical of the minimal adjustments and subtle gestures that characterise my sculptural work. By taking a piece of the building and moving it to somewhere it isn’t supposed to be, it becomes a sculptural presence and begins to have its own effects. There is a contrast between the purposelessness of curtains removed from a window and their optimistic colour, which appears almost illuminated from within, speaking of hope, spring, lightness, potential, and the year ahead.