Rigid branded boxes, designed and associated with e-commerce for next day delivery have been sealed, wrapped and extracted to leave sellotape cases.
What is left, are translucent wobbly cubes tentatively trying to maintain their shape, yet often sagging, even collapsing under their own weight. It offers the suggestion that this could be a fragile inter-dependency between powerful multinational corporations with their compliant and consumerist market through the facilitation of a utilized workforce. This vulnerable balance, often unacknowledged, yet indispensable, is all that holds today's markets together.
What is left, are translucent wobbly cubes tentatively trying to maintain their shape, yet often sagging, even collapsing under their own weight. It offers the suggestion that this could be a fragile inter-dependency between powerful multinational corporations with their compliant and consumerist market through the facilitation of a utilized workforce. This vulnerable balance, often unacknowledged, yet indispensable, is all that holds today's markets together.
During Lockdown I daily wrapped the Amazon delivery boxes that I had ordered with sellotape to create translucent casts to represent my confinement.
Once removed the cardboard boxes still infuse the sellotape material with its universal, cultural and functional associations; from the practical and useful to the containment of space, to harbouring secrets or smells. These wobbly sellotape husks fold and slump yet retain their shape while holding everything together around a void. While embodied in the layers of adhesive are trapped traces of the human hand, hermetically sealing in the moment of construction, like a tomb.
Yet sellotape; seemly an ephemeral everyday inconsequential manmade material erodes like stone or pottery. It breaks into ever smaller particles over time, to alter the ecological balance and direction of evolution. It endures, with an outcome still not known as it is absorbed into all living matter, which opens additional questions as to wither non-living matter, like negative space needs to be revalued and perceived differently.
When restrictions started to lift I ventured out to document the work in various locations, as my way to give the work exposure, as exhibitions were prohibited.
Once removed the cardboard boxes still infuse the sellotape material with its universal, cultural and functional associations; from the practical and useful to the containment of space, to harbouring secrets or smells. These wobbly sellotape husks fold and slump yet retain their shape while holding everything together around a void. While embodied in the layers of adhesive are trapped traces of the human hand, hermetically sealing in the moment of construction, like a tomb.
Yet sellotape; seemly an ephemeral everyday inconsequential manmade material erodes like stone or pottery. It breaks into ever smaller particles over time, to alter the ecological balance and direction of evolution. It endures, with an outcome still not known as it is absorbed into all living matter, which opens additional questions as to wither non-living matter, like negative space needs to be revalued and perceived differently.
When restrictions started to lift I ventured out to document the work in various locations, as my way to give the work exposure, as exhibitions were prohibited.
The Brewery Tap, Folkestone May 2021 with Ali Lees & Melanie Jordan
BT Phone Booth, A20 Sellindge Friday 7 May 2021 18.52-20.10
Monks Horton Church Friday 7 May 2021 17.05-18.16 BST
Gasworks Lane, Ashford Saturday 1 August 2020 07.30-09.00 BST
Ellingham Industrial Estate, Ashford Saturday 1 August 2020 06.30- 06.50 BST
Warren Retail Park, Ashford Thursday 30 July 2020 20.15-20.45 BST
Flybridge Storage Barn, Canterbury Monday 27 July 2020 11.00 - 12.30 BST