"Matrix" is a small playing-card-sized book using a variety of papers of contrasting weight and texture. It is similar in size and structure to a little book "Age Marks" I made with Trace Willans a few years ago.
I always keep some of the handmade and unusual paper scraps from other projects but they often sit in yet another forgotten folder in my studio. I was having a cleanout during the pandemic and came across one of these folders and made the little book. I don't often make a book without research or preliminary artist proofs, but this is one that started without any pre-conceived idea of what was to follow. The cover is an old hand-made piece of paper from recycled mount board from 20 years ago.
Although nostalgia and memory are important to my way of making art, this is not just a fondness of old things. I have cigar boxes (from my father) full of materials: stamps, cigar bands, diary snippets, maps, and tickets from travels during my life, to trawl through for suitable combinations.
Each page is a separate image unrelated to the others directly but using various different objects and materials to reflect the disorderly, random, incongruous pattern of normal daily experience, not to recreate chaos but to create a process of finding our own logic in the complexities surrounding us.
I have shown each double spread page as the book opens and different pages overlap or show their edges, the way you would see it, instead of cropping each page and presenting it as a separate image.
The different elements are explored until it seems right and the underlying ideas and memories come to the surface by chance.
"Matrix" is informed by my daily experiences and thoughts, which are born at home and expanded and contextualized from seeing life lived all over the world- my experiences, past works, and issues in contemporary art. Special areas of interest which surface include travel, memory, mapping, migration and location, chance and imagination.
6 comments:
That's a very interesting book Jack. I've always been impressed that you seem to have so many odds and bobs and bits and pieces to include in your work. I was particularly touched by your comments about your father having cigar boxes full of materials (stamps, cigar bands, diary snippets, maps, and tickets from travels). That's a nice continuum that you do the same thing and use your saved material to create something beautiful.
Thanks Helen. It's like my poor befuddled brain - lots of odds and sods and lots of floating bits and pieces which unfortunately often have trouble finding each other.
Stunning book Mr Oudyn - the rawness of texture stands out with its cover to unfold a softenss on the inside with each of the pages lending a warmth to tell the story.
No surprise to find in 'matrix' another delightful, whimsical, intriguing book. I enjoyed being able to view large images on my iMac which meant I could spend time lingering over all the little details which speak of a life lived, and travelled and observed. A sense of humour and sense of place also reveal to me. But then we often look at work we love and read either too much or too little into it. I was thankful for your explanation - though i lingered over the photos of each page myself first, before reading what you had to say!
Hope it is a happy year from you Jack. Good to be blogging again and being able to drop by your 'studio' every now and then.
Thanks for your kind words Tracy and Susan, I often don't look back to see if anyone has responded, so was wonderfully surprised.
Hey Jack, I was un packing again, as we are now in not so sunny Tasmania, and came across all the treasures I have from you, as I tacked them up I though I wonder what Jack is up to and went off to see that you are still blogging and low and behold just a couple of entries down a reference to me. Maybe it is time to catch up. I hope you serendipitously happen to look back and see this.
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