36 St. Mary Axe Print

My work is focused around the idea of the "˜urban maze', which is a chaotic, lively and constantly changing place. When in the built environment the eye is constantly distracted, it is drawn to one thing and is almost immediately attracted to something else and this is what I aim to convey within my work. I work with the decomposition of photographs to create new images. By decontextualising and recomposing locations around the city in this case London, it is my intention to create fragmented compositions that question our sense of perception. The new images are slightly skewed from their originals and it is this fragmentation that highlights a kind of "˜architectural kaleidoscope' as one is overwhelmed by the urban environment. The starting point for this work came from studying the Vorticisists and their appreciation of the dynamism of the modern age which is always a constant reference point for my work. In thinking about the Vortex, "˜It is a violent central activity attracting everything to itself, absorbing all that is around it into a violent whirling- a violent central engulfing.' This is a key theme that runs throughout my work- a lack of a clear focal point means the eye is constantly moving as the viewer becomes enveloped in the image. Reading Italo Calvino's text Invisible Cities he describes the built environment in many different ways, the most important for my work being, "˜Cities like dreams are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspective deceitful and everything conceals something else." This text has been key in developing my working methods, particularly in terms of the idea that everything is concealing something else. It is this which led me to working with many different layers in one composition. When making the work I try and place myself back in the city in order to be able to make a more valid statement within an image. Photography is essential to my work; I begin by tracing lines from different buildings and joining them together to create one image. It is this that begins to contribute to the chaotic and overwhelming feeling of being in the urban maze. These drawings are then reworked onto a larger scale and printed onto canvas. Layers of collage and paint are then applied to the surface which brings the image to life and the composition becomes overloaded with information. Pattern is particularly important in the second layer of my work.