Deconstruction Construction Manual (1990 remade in 1997)

‘Deconstruction Construction Manual’ is a work that involves the viewer in the construction of a sculpture in the form of a model. Once completed, the viewer is invited to use the model to create narratives between the objects, the figures and the environment; to participate and tell their own stories. This is intended to introduce the idea of artificial narratives and historical truths as laid out in museum exhibitions and art history. Our obsession with ruins, and partially preserved objects is particularly significant as it offers a microcosm of our way of imposing subjective if not romantic versions of history.

Why use broken statues? As Peter Fuller suggests in his book ‘Art and Psychoanalysis’, a damaged statue, such as the famous Venus de Milo, creates more interest than an undamaged one. It’s intriguing, mysterious, and we derive pleasure from restoring the figure in our imaginations.

Statues are conventionally placed on pedestals or plinths; elevated for our gaze and removed from our touch. Using the two large pillars found in the environment as readymade plinths, this work subverts the traditional role of the plinth in isolating the artwork from the viewer. By actively involving viewers in creating the imagined world of the sculpture this work makes them self-conscious of their activity as viewers, and the plinth no longer simply symbolises withdrawal, it becomes a focus of contemplation and activity.

The possibility for imaginative re-creation is introduced through the use of photography within the model and through the absence of the site (the site itself has been bulldozed). As Claus Oldenburg’s postcard collages demonstrate, spaces may be as fundamentally altered by changing perceptions as by changing what is there to be perceived.

“Now there can be no doubt that one of the most effective and least

boring of didactic mechanisms is the diorama, the reduced-scale reproduction, the model, the crèche. But, primarily, the diorama

aims to establish itself as a substitute for reality, as something

even more real”.

Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality.

“We have long been accustomed to seeing statues in museums…

To discover newer and more mysterious aspects we must have

access to new combinations. For example: a statue in a room, whether

it be alone or in the company of living people, could give us a new

emotion if it were made in such a way that its feet rested on the floor and not on a base”.

Giorgio de Chirico, Statues, Furniture and Generals.

Casts (1996)

In ‘The Originality of the Avant-Garde’, Rosalind Krauss reflects on the paradox of authenticity in the work of Rodin, where the casting mould, typically seen as a means of reproduction, can paradoxically be understood as the true original. This tension between originality and replication sits at the heart of the work.

‘Casts’ engages directly with this idea by presenting hand-made versions of casting moulds, objects conventionally used to mass-produce identical forms. Here, however, the moulds are singular, crafted individually and displayed as unique, original artworks. Their hand-made nature subverts the logic of the mould itself, which is normally associated with standardisation and mechanical repetition.

Museum (1999-01)

Museum consists of a series of small vitrines which contain toys, classified and displayed to reflect the taxonomy of a museum collection in miniature.

While the objects in ‘Museum’ reflect the type of objects typically collected by museums, including furniture, musical instruments, clothes, animals and toy models, they simultaneously remain a single collection of toys. In this way, Museum disrupts normal classification systems and highlights the artificial ‘unity’ of objects in museum collections.

Like collecting itself, playing with toys involves possession, manipulation, control, illusion, fiction, and imagination. Toys fulfil a need and are invested with ideas and fantasies. In ‘Museum Objects and Collections’, Susan Pearce suggests that the emotional relationship that we have with objects comes from our earliest childhood experiences and that our ability to project and internalise through play and toys is at the root of the collecting desire itself.

In common with objects in a museum, the toys in the glass cases have become dissociated from their original function and subsequently become inanimate and frozen in time.

Imagining Poe (2005-10)

‘Imagining Poe’ consists of digital prints of virtual interiors based on Edgar Allan Poe's 'Philosophy of Furniture.' In this essay Poe outlines his critique of taste and style. He suggests that some homes threatened to be “a poor museum stuffed with status symbols.” In the second part of his essay Poe describes the ‘solution’ to his cultural critique in the form of an ideal, restful room.

As its title suggests, ‘Imagining Poe’ is an imaginative projection. In this artwork, virtual images of both interiors and furniture have been created using cheap, home design software which is typically used to enable its user to fulfil what may be a psychological need to create proposals of their ideal interior or home. The stripped-down simplicity of the computer generated interiors and objects, their uniform colours and flat textures, coupled with their presentation as a sterile home furnishing catalogue transforms everything into a representation of an ideal.

These fictitious, imaginary spaces, which are limited by the constraints of the unsophisticated and primitive software, are ordinary and bland reflecting Poe’s own deadpan reportage on style and taste. They also question the underlying needs that drive users to seek a technological simulation of an ideal. The imaginary gothic world that Poe creates in his essay is compromised and subverted and is used as an ironic contrast to the bland and ‘aspirational’ imaginary spaces and objects produced by architectural software.

“He began by acquiring a house, then as the charm of

ownership increased, he added the garden, the little wood etc.

None of this existed outside of his imagination, but it sufficed

for these little fancied possessions to take on reality in his eyes.

He spoke of them and derived pleasure from them as though

they were real”.

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space.

Model Collection (After Sir John Soane) (2014)

‘Model Collection (After Sir John Soane)’ is a series of layered images made from a collection of virtual dream homes produced by users who obsessively construct virtual worlds. The source images were confiscated from Google’s 3D Warehouse.

These ‘aspirational models’ appear as digital doll’s houses which, like the traditional doll’s house, embody each individual’s ideal world; their inner desires and fantasies and which are independent of any limits imposed by nature or society. As with doll’s houses, the viewer can also take in both the inside and the outside of the virtual model simultaneously, which, in addition to reflecting the tension between the exterior and interior, allows for a mental projection into the world of the model; what Susan Stewart describes in her book ‘On Longing’, as “the promise of an infinitely profound interiority.”

Andre Breton’s Collectors House (2012), Sir John Soane’s Model Room (2013), Horace Walpole’s Paper House (2014), Edmond de Goncourt’s Junk Collection (2014)

In his novel ‘Against the Grain (A Rebours)’, JK Huysmans describes how the character Jean des Esseintes employs his collection to stimulate his imagination to create an ideal private universe or dreamworld.  This series of works focus on how individual collectors use their collections and the private space of the interior to create what is essentially an ideal and illusionary universe, or what Walter Benjamin refers to in the Arcades Projects, as the “phantasmagoria of the interior.”

Most of the virtual rooms in the series are reconstructions of interiors that no longer exist and/or of collections that have long since been dispersed. The computer reconstructions not only present the collections as imagined ideals, but also the interiors as the original site of the collecting desire itself.

In Edmond de Goncourt’s book, La Maison d’ un Artiste, Goncourt provides a room by room description and inventory of the art collection and library in his house at Auteuil. As well as describing the main rooms in the house, including the dining room, the vestibule and the bedroom, the book also describes a junk room. ‘Goncourt’s Junk Collection’ (2014) highlights the juxtaposition of random objects in an imaginary interior which, due to the heterogeneity of its objects, functions as the opposite to a collection, a kind of anti-collection. The disorderly juxtaposition of objects in a junk room may not immediately bring to mind the museum. But as Janell Watson suggests in her book ‘Literature and Material Culture from Balzac to Proust’, in the museum (as in the junk room) no intrinsic connection exists amongst the objects whatsoever except for external connections based on similarity or seriality.