Dazzle / 12 bar crop - Limited Edition of 48 Print

The Dazzle piece I drew for my 2017 show Current at Catto was 200cm wide, but the drawing seemed to offer an opportunity to generate a smaller work on paper as well. So after a little further experimentation, I cropped the study down to the 12 vertical bars that form the central core of the composition, and tried it out at various sizes on the Hahnemühle paper, settling in the end for this pigment print edition at 60cm high. I like the idea of the 12 bar crop, with its strong musical connotations. Dazzle is another work that uses my SV (systematic variation) technique to modulate the line drawing in ways that make it denser, more complex, and less overtly machine generated. I hope it takes on some of the life you’d find in a classic Missoni fabric, as well as drawing inspiration from the amazing ‘camouflaged’ vessels that became known as dazzle ships in the war. There’s a nod to the astonishingly baroque Siousie Sioux track here too of course, as well as a particularly important custom Lambretta that really led the way back in the eighties when I was still heavily involved in the custom spray painting scene, using American metal flake and Candy paints. I tend to think it's this distillation of the life lived that informs all the decision making that lies at the heart of my studio practice. An amalgamation of visual references and experiences that inform the works being made. It’s more than that of course, but that's an important part of it I think.