‘Houding’ – João Ferreira Gallery, 2001

‘Houding’ found me working in my characteristic unconventional materials using repetitive processes. In this work I explored the notion of materials and permanence.

While polystyrene is cheap and throwaway, it stands a good chance of outlasting more precious materials such as bronze, but will never show signs of its age nor become attractive because of that. The bronze works here were cast from models I made out of polystyrene punnets which I fashioned into objects that recall the design of durable objects and materials such as treadplate and draincovers.

I had shown the large scale linocut the previous year and felt that its marking of time and the way in which the passage of the single, red line spoke in some way of erosion, sat well with these works.