The Sprawl: Drawings based on the land of people. April 18th – May 31st. Thurs-Sun 12-4pm.

This exhibition is a ‘installationalised’ selection of drawings covering the social landscape; the urbanization and takeover of the natural land and the methods of control over its inhabitants. The centerpiece is The Sprawl, an expansive paper drawing; incorporated around the shape of half of my bedroom (hence the unusual shape) colonizing all workable surfaces in the manner of a expanding city. An expression of a how the city becomes one giant super organism, although separate and hazardous towards Earths working life systems. All the inhabitants, their cars and trains are like the blood running through the veins keeping the city alive.

The Sprawl

  Waking Up (Part of The Sprawl installation)

Central Bombardment

People Factory

Three Tiers of a Sinking Ship

Checking in at springtime again

The same old manic approach. As soon as the days get longer and the sun shines brighter, anxiety blossoms inside of me, highlighting everything I ‘need to do now’ to avoid the feeling of failure and the doldrums. I recognise the face in the reflection of the train station windows – the face of me whilst living at 400mph, forgetting my values, whilst searching for that stand from which to shout my values from. This fear: I struggle to contain it in the sun – I can almost feel the whip cracking me on the back, with a master saying ‘this is where the year truly starts! now go! go and play!’ I like to manically rush about at times. I know it is bad and I feel like I am soaking up the oxygen from the grasp of everyone else’s nostrils, and I know it is my method of running away from things, but at this instant it feels better to be speeding nowhere at 400mph.

Fear always causes me to race ahead, to a hazy, dreamlike, unrealistically better future. Fear gets going, pumping through my veins as I start to plan my day ahead, as if it were more like a war than a normal day. Always jumping too soon; waking up too early; tiring out too early; trying to leave places too early, and giving in to the gloom too early at the end of it all.

The more reading I have started doing, the less confidence I have in my own opinions.

The Sprawl (2008)

This is probably one of the most ambitious drawing projects I have ever done. The drawing composition/idea arrived amidst an anxious rail journey, turning the anxiety into exhilaration, as it was just one of those ideas that I instantly felt worked. I decided the best way to make this drawing would be to make it spread, like a sprawl, around a room.