PavementJAM, 2019

Wax, plaster, acrylic paint, concrete, foam, plywood, MDF, steel, gravel, UV print, screenprint on cotton, screenprint on paper, billboard poster, ratchet strapping, rope
Dimensions variable

PavementJAM is a gathering of grouped assemblages, a facade of pavements creasing and folding apart, hooped and latched between wax and plaster bike locks. The different supports, both horizontal and erected, hold microcosms of fossilised materials, suspended into a catalogue of artificial representations of street miscellaneous. Towering compressed billboards hang in a lurch above the ground-based formations, correlating through repeated screenprinted images, colour and residual textures. John Ruskin spoke of the ‘ground as a veil’, describing temporary covering (being the pavement) but not complete cover up (the earth still exists below). As surface wears, the depths are revealed. These cracks and ethereal veiling are referenced within my installation, with rigid steel and wood hidden by the thin sheen of draped translucent cotton and curled foam.

Professor Tim Ingold spoke about the relationship between art and anthropology, considering the methodologies for practices around site and place. His words below touch upon some of the ideologies mentioned, words that prompted me to make my degree show works: ‘the ground is caught in a double movement, of opening up and closing off, formation and encrustation, thanks to which its inhabitants are at once confidently supported and precariously afloat.’