METRO TOTEMS: Artist Statements

 

Cathy Duncan

This work is about journeys and contrasts: personal and collective, universal and particular, visual and written.

My work generally employs the use of waste materials and this piece was to have been a collage composed of used metro tickets. This, however, proved impossible as too few tickets are now discarded. The work has therefore evolved and now also incorporates a record of my journey in completing the piece.

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Fred Fowler

Metro Totem

Sunlight, yellow.
Noises, green and red.
Sky a bright blue.
The new towers
Glisten in the rain,
Fade into grey.
Summer and shadows
Mark the passing hours.
Helter skelter
Clickety, Click.
You can`t keep
Time in a box,
Like a fox
Or a pair of socks.

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William Harris

THE DEATH OF A FOREST

As art can be seen as a reaction to an event or happening - consider this exhibition as the reverse or rather the cause of the event

(THE DEATH OF A FOREST)

Reduced to pulp to create the boxes from which this exhibition is born.

As Michael Craig-Martin’s depiction of “An Oak Tree” appears to be a glass of water on a shelf, the artist states that it is in fact an oak tree. It addresses fundamental questions about what we understand to be art and our faith in the power of the artist.
The work can be seen as an exploration of Marcel Duchamp’s declaration that any existing object can be declared a work of art.

As a totem can the box be adopted as an emblem of the tree? (reborn)

The ability to believe that an object is something other than its physical appearance indicates, requires a transformative vision. This type of seeing (and knowing) is at the heart of conceptual thinking processes, by which intellectual and emotional values are conferred on images and objects.

The problem here is the box is (or rather was) The Forest

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Decia Morris

Cast a little light relief – Day and Night

The totem is constructed from three basic shapes, a rectangle, circle and triangle. The sublime power of the Sun and Moon is depicted in iconic images of the Sun, Moon and Stars which we have grown up with since childhood, these are simple and familiar devices used for creating the totem. Day and Night shows the rising and setting sun with a waxing and waning moon. On the peak the sun is fully risen.

One of the tribe - Decia Morris

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Dick Rainer

Metropolis  -  A Monument in Three Acts

“The Park has systems of points, surfaces and lines, but they are superimposed so that they mutually distort, and sometimes clash with each other. Paths intersect buildings, ramps and staircases are cut off, etc. The system avoids synthesis. There`s no single coherent outcome.

(from “Deconstruction in the Park”  Bernard Tschumi: Swiss 1982)*

The context into which ASSIGN artists have been invited to respond creatively through a collective installation can be seen as redolent of `intersections between buildings, ramps, and staircases, enveloped within a system of travel`  -  “METROPOLISPlaza” is my contribution to this collective enterprise.

*Introducing Derrida/Collins and Mayblim: Icon/Totem Books, USA)

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Tony Redman

 

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Angela Rodgerson

My work portrays ordinary people enjoying themselves in a holiday environment. Using photographs, observation and imagination, it has been my aim to compose interesting
and colourful figurative compositions.
 
It is not my intention to impose my own narrative on the viewer - I leave it to their own observations and imagination to put their own interpretation on the paintings.

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Frank Styles

Metro Totem Bioblurb

GUERNICA.  GLOSS.  AEROSOL APPLIED
PIGMENTATION.  DISTRACTIONS. NO
BUTTERFLIES OR TURNIPS. MAYBE
A WORM. IN BETWEEN MIDNIGHT
AND MIDDAY. EMULSION. BEERS
WINES AND SPIRITS. NOT A LOT,
OR A LITTLE, AMOUNT OF BISCUITS.
HORSE.  A NICE IMAGE.

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Alex Surtees

Throughout our lives we are surrounded by images, logos, maps, directions and instructions. They tell us where to go, what to consume to survive our daily lives.

Rubik's Cube is an iconic image many people recognise and are familiar with. I have chosen to use the cube to present other familiar images. Some of the images represent my own. Personal journey through art, music, travel, influences and inspiration.

Special thanks - Rubik`s Cube imagery used by kind permission of Seven Towns Ltd.

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Pat Thirtle

Chateau Metro - Fantasy Castle

Fantasy plays a large part in my creative life. As an artist and puppet maker, painter
of the local scene, I often push my work to the boundaries of the fantastic, always
with a light touch of humour.

Given three large boxes to work with, the result was almost inevitable….

Chateau Metro.

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