Semi-Automatic Painting Machine (2014)

In the production of anything of value – whether it be artworks, objects, even ideas - there is a requirement for work to be done. For the most part though, it is the work element that often remains hidden. In the case of art, the making of work has also been subject to a substantial mythology, often centred around the studio, and the act of creation. What often receives less attention is a focus on the labour that is required to produce any kind of work and the possibility that might be present in the materials that might go to make it. When those materials are taken from everyday life, then this makes the process all the more interesting. The show deals in the notion of transformation, the clever use of disparate things in order to make something new, and to think about something in a different way. With the creative use of materials there is something of a more democratic impulse, the idea of art mattering on a level from the ground up. In this way, the audience have a different kind of investment in both the work and the everyday life out of which it emerges