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Camulodunum

One of four international artists including Aleksandra Mir, Michaela Eichwald and Danh Vo, I was commissioned to make new work for “Camulodunum”, the inaugural group exhibition at Firstsite, Colchester in the new contemporary arts centre designed by Rafael Vinoly. The exhibition comprised works by nineteen artists including Ai Weiwei, Rebecca Warren, Robert Smithson and Andy Warhol. I was asked to respond to the scale of the new building, situated on the remains of a Roman settlement - Britain’s first city.

I showed Relief #96, 2011, a wall-based relief sculpture comprised of 42 parts made from concrete, plaster, pigment and spray paint.

The work comes out of a studio-based practice and centred on ideas around ornamentation, aspects of touch and the haptic; considering architectural scale and surface. I employ a range of unique low-tech casting techniques and invented processes, often disturbing and redirecting the casting process, in an attempt to produce non-linear artificial surfaces and objects. To turn a material from a liquid state into a solid allows for a giving up of control in the making process – producing an instant geological sense combined with a conceptual and directed overview.

The elements of the piece are made successively, gradually building up the overall composition. The roughness and imprecision of form and surface is set in contrast with a strict symmetry and sense of order.

A parallel publication “Villas” was presented alongside the work in the exhibition. I gave talks presenting my architectural research as part of Firstsite’s public programme and at the Architecture Foundation in London.

Camulodunum received over 75,000 visitors and was widely reviewed including in the Guardian Guide. Relief #96 was shown again at the Mackintosh Museum at Glasgow School of Art at the group exhibition “A Conspiracy of Detail” in 2013.