|
The Overgrown Village
Old broken clocks are also a favourite material of mine. I gut them, often reusing the inner workings and clock faces in other pieces. With this particular one, once all the mechanisms were removed, the holes and spaces formed the most wonderful 'sad face' on the reverse side. My work often touches on themes of decay, ephemerality and nostalgia and framing the work in a clock extends this, as well as creating the sense of looking through time to a particular moment. This is the particularly the feeling I want to capture here in depicting an abandoned village. The piece is inspired both by a fascination with real abandoned villages but also our conflicted relationship with Nature and the looming threat of environmental catastrophe. With the tiny blades of paper grass and trees pushing past paper microwaves and red postboxes, I want the viewer to wonder why the inhabitants of this unexplained place have gone and whether this is a scene from the past or the future. Mixed Media on Paper Collage, Gutted Alarm Clock, 12cm diameter
|