Floating 2nd Edition On display during October 2022

My limited edition print 'Floating' will be on display during the first two weeks in October 2022 as part of the Peninsular Studio Trail Art Show in Mornington, Victoria. It will be exhibited with my sculpture 'Inside My Shell', which is currently under construction. The three prints made up the series 'Floating' - i, ii, iii. These were first exhibited around eighteen years ago (see images bottom of this post).

I did not think I would return to this series of artworks as I did not see the subject matter as a viable one to pursue. However, I was recently going through old sketch books and saw the first drawings I made when an idea started to form. I realised as I scanned through the sketches, that I had not realised this body of work to its full potential. I wanted to incorporate 2D and 3D works together, but for many reasons too complicated to mention here, did not get round to bring all the disparate parts together. I am not sure why I feel justified in doing this all these years later. However, I suppose there's part of me that simply wants to see it as a reality: if only to make sure the artistic vision I had was a worthwhile one.

The original idea was as much about shifting forms in nature as it was an homage to the great Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, it was also meant to be a manifestation of my earlier writing on what I have come to term 'The Temporal Fragment' and 'The Kinetic Summary'; both states of mind and function in harmony with one another. The former exists fractionally ahead of the latter. By fractionally, I mean within the smallest amount of time possible. The full description of this can be read on my post "You Jest" Dedicated to the memory of the art critic and writer Peter Fuller.

All my artworks these days are born through writing (poetry), which along with the many sketches I make (when my mind is working properly!), is my starting point. A starting point from which, a full aesthetic can be developed. I have to have a formal subject matter as I never want to fall into the realm of loose abstract ideas that at the end of the day (for me at least), are all surface and no substance. There is far too much of that around at the moment in many contemporary galleries, which is tiresome, to say the least. So much of it, quite frankly, is all surface and no substance. There are many political reasons for this that I will not go into here. My recent post 'An Abundance Of Bland' expresses my feeling on this area of contemporary art.

Having mentioned poetry as a staring point for all my recent artworks, the earlier suite of works 'Floating' was born through prose, rather than poetry as the intention was to realise in physical terms the duality of temporal fragment and the kinetic summary. My earlier artworks that incorporated 2D and 3D paintings and objects (in the 'You Jest' exhibition), were made at a time when I first started writing about this notion. Put simply, in its purest form, a mark as simple as a short line (it can be any kind of mark), encompasses the temporal fragment and the kinetic summary. The artist puts pencil to paper and draws a simple mark. As the mark is made, the artist is experiencing the temporal fragment while at the same time, their mind is creating the kinetic summary. The two states of being go hand in hand, albeit fractionally apart. The memory of this simple act is a third state of being. The two most important parts of the mark making moment come into being - or exist in the artist's mind as the mark is made. The memory of the act enters into the artist's memory bank for future use. However, each time a similar mark is made, the artist experiences the temporal fragment (the experience of making a mark), and the kinetic summary (the instant memory of it. The two states of being go virtually hand in hand.

Upon revisiting the original sketches for this series of artworks, I remembered how much I liked the title 'Floating'. It gave a sense of moving through different states of being while at the same time i remember thinking, was the perfect word to define the temporal fragment and the kinetic summery. I have therefore decided to use the same title again and am hoping the resulting image and sculpture do justice to the original concept. Images of the original artworks are below.