Gunpowder

Something Magical

 

It started when I was young, taking fireworks apart. It continues today.

This is the ultimate Big Bang – recontextualising ancient calligraphic methodologies through Ancient and Contemporary materials that reference to the transitional impermanence of life.

Ethereal Whispers

Gunpowder has a duality in that it was initially created as a medicine, to heal; but is better known for its powers of destruction. I see these as the ultimate Zen moment, where embodied gesture meets unseen Alchemy. These artworks use this ephemeral quality of gunpowder where I ‘paint’ with the material, like drawing, whereby I add the material to a surface. Here, opposites are in harmony, where the seen world of material and the unseen world of universal forces combine to leave a ghostly trace of the artist’s touch. The explosion effectively removes the material that was gesturally applied. This trace is forever held, fused into the substrate material in the Art of War series; or by removing material in the Poly-Glyph Series, which references the most Ancient form of Calligraphy where material was removed when carvings were made in Oracle Bones and tortoise shells before ink and paper was even invented.