Loss

Loss
New project with Jules Findley
Chichester Cathedral 2012

A project which explores issues of loss.

The project focuses on personal loss and the wider context of loss reflecting social political agendas.The work developed explores notions of the loss of the hand-made alongside the emergence of the digital. Working with industry major artworks have been produced which research the expressive potential of digital stitch outside of the production bias.

Paradise Lost looks at loss of landscape and life in response to the Japanese Tsunami 2011 and the subsequent nuclear catastrophe 2011. It is a work in homage to those who lost their lives.

Beyond this immediate event the work makes reference to Milton’s epic narrative poem Paradise Lost. The poem’s central theme surrounds the fall of Adam and Eve, and examines its cause and the possibility of redemption. ‘Felix culpa’ or fortunate fall expresses optimism, the emergence into a better place as a consequence of the fall, through God’s mercy and the birth of Christ. The background of the stitched piece echoes Piero della Francesca’s ‘Nativity’ in the National Gallery. In this case what was an italianate landscape has become industrial and radiation damaged. What should be the angels are a group of children mutated by the impact of exposure.

Homage to Guernica looks at war and the consequent loss of life. The work looks at the shift of perspective from horizontal to the vertical as with Picasso’s Guernica which contains symbols which change form a different perspective. The association is that war is a matter in part of perspective which can change and shift through attitude. If not the consequence is powerfully destructive. The simple device of change from vertical to horizontal and vice versa is used to denote life, and death.

Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost