‘The Negligible Things Under Your Feet’  2019
 

Variable number of unglazed, fired clay forms.

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In this project, I wanted to bring into play a way of making art that forgoes the monumental and the spectacular in favour a low-key entanglement of the public in the strategy of the piece. The material aspect of this work consisted of a large number of small shapes and forms of fired white clay. The unpredictable and incidental ways that these items were redistributed and dispersed by the passage of human walkers, (and, occasionally, visits from other creatures), were key for the development of the work over five days.

An initial condition was established by placing clusters of these forms in relation to the features and debris found on the site on the installation day. Over the course of the show, I expected visitors to tread on, dislodge and otherwise scatter the items. I expected too that some would be picked up and then discarded or taken away from the site. In the event, many of the ceramic forms were indeed redistributed in these and many other ways.
'Making a find’ was the point of maximum engagement with the work by the visitor with perhaps some interest and curiosity about the status and kind of object they were handling.
I anticipated that there would be a residue of pieces that were not collected  and they therefore added another element to the material history of the site perhaps to become a ‘find’ in the weeks, months or years afterwards.

At the close of the show, what remains was collected by me to take onto another phase by re-assembling into small clusters which were then cast in bronze.

For the duration of a show, the shapes and forms in ‘The Negligible Things Under your Feet’, are merely items within a field I call a ’dispersed sculpture’. After the show, these forms, remade and recast into small sculptures, ('REMADES'),

are offered for sale; in effect, a move to distribute and disperse the items into other contexts.