Grounding (2013)
Newport Substation : 5 screen installation : surround sound
I have made a number of studies over recent years that rely, in part or in whole, upon a close study of the materiality of the gallery space in which I am working. My work for Vantage Point extends a number of trajectories from this ongoing body of work. For this installation I have made a simple index of imagery examining the ground beneath our feet across the three levels of gallery three: the utility space beneath the floor, the main gallery floor and the steps leading us to the mezzanine. The audio, in a similar vein to the video, amplifies the existing conditions by recording and amplifying the ambient sound of the gallery - that which we normally ‘filter out’.
In terms of my vantage point upon this subject matter, what I choose to highlight about these largely ignored parts of our environment, I am recurringly drawn the intersection of the organic and the manufactured. I seek out the zones where the natural forces of entropy – wind, water, gravity, and the passage of plants or animals – have worked upon man-made artefacts to lend them an organic irregularity. In grounding we see the gnawing of rats on insulation, the spores caught as they blow in from ventilation shafts, the cracking floors as foundations shift, and the scuffs of many feet across rubber, steel and aluminium. These points where the articulated and organised are interrupted highlight and puncture the artificial schism between nature and culture.