David Sowerby
'THE IDLES THAT HABIT FORMS'
Project space, Fine art building, University of Leeds, Sept 28 - Oct 21 2017
The studio has always been something of a mutable entity in my practice, a home, a room in an actual artist’s studio, a daily bus, a note book… for some time now it has partly been the daily routines of work, supporting students with critical discourse and tacit knowledge; making boxes, stretcher frames, plinths. This humble arena just off stage where plans are made and material is processed has supplemented my practice with the practical refuse of fabrication and the day to day rituals and structural problem solving of work.
These spoils, off cuts and waste materials from my workplace as well as the cast away objects picked up from the floor, the street, the refuse container, carefully selected, stored, treasured and then re-emerging as a coalescence. The formal and functional directions of these builds are at points, reliant on the circumstantial nature of material as found and sometimes processed using rational problem solving and natural structural solutions. But almost always with a view to creating a casement, an interior of space surrounded by an exterior shell, a skin, a housing. The resulting works could be presented as the displayed stages of a life form, a range of processing or sensory devices, the devotional idols or reliquaries of a religion or belief system. But the question is never fully resolved, the inner workings, organs or relics are missing beyond view.
I aim for works that offer a kind of resonance in the manner in which they are perceived; that appear to be familiar and then in next moment fall in to question and uneasiness. The reasoning behind their existence fluctuating in and out of focus.
These collected works claim Frankenstein’s monster as their existential position. Made of elements combined; they speak of locality, from the particular centre that is me. I view my material as coming with baggage, recorded exposure to activity, to time and the conditions around them, like the strata in earth or the rings of the tree trunk. The wear and tear on their surface like the grooves of a record or some forgotten and mysterious set of symbols and arrangements, their meanings and reasoning lost. Much of the surfaces and spoils are the products of the work that I have carried out in the service of employment, but their arrangement and nature are wholly absent of any aesthetic conceit; it is only at the point of attraction and selection that I look at them with the eyes of my practice, being author and not author.
These are my vehicles, made individually according to compulsions, questions, dreams, memories and experience. At their simplest level they are about the body; casements for chemistry and the natural impulses of survival and meaning.