Peripheries, 2020-2025

The aesthetics of these works are a series of metaphysical enactments, in varying states of stillness, rupture, pleasure, withdrawal, withering memory, dreaming and desire. In the formal structure of the work — in the slowing down, near immobility, opacity, and looped repetition of the image, there is a loss of sense of time and relation to the other self which endows the relationship between the viewer and the representational limits of the image. These traits simultaneously represent a subjective view and anticipate a viewing subject whose memory and perceptual, attentional, and relational faculties are considerably devitalised. In these works time and space is trapped in a loop by constant repetition of the same action, simmering in a state of immutability. The subject is imprisoned inside a glass box; unable to learn from their failures, absorbed by self, and dissociated from the other, engaging in a reenactment of the mythic figure Sisyphus, who repeatedly pushes a stone up a hill only to see it fall down again under its own weight. The works do not produce anything other than predictable repetition, which brings into question the value of their meaning. This contrast is essential to understanding the work and the creation of work itself. The effort is both huge and unproductive, and it is this lack of productivity and repetitive effort that condemns the subject to isolation and the structured framing of the image contributes to this reeling of remoteness. It is as though nothing is lost or will be lost in the actions that are destined to be persistently repeated.