Fiction as Fact/Fact as Fiction

Each of my projects has existed (so far) as a satellite – spinning in ever decreasing circles – adhering to the next in a growing installation of ever ambitious proportions. In order to capture the spirit of the direction I’m heading (in writing), I am attempting to establish a working process where everything is recorded in these pages. However rough the latest schema. I suppose the ideal posture will be to sift and enjoy everything, knowing that something will crystallise and then I’ll start stripping away and go through that pain of discarding what I once thought was crucial.

I am also expecting that my slap-dash approach to research will be particularly rich in this process: in that reading, mis-reading and sudden discoveries will all be tempered by the impulse to make an image, sometimes not even pondering the relationship between reading and making. As long as everything is recorded, I know in advance that I will decipher my tracks with hindsight.

Investigating the Grey Area between.

Aims of Investigation

To present ‘evidence’ in an attempt to get to the bottom of a problem – the problem being one of bias and perception – to illustrate a truthful picture.

Evidence

The accumulation of small artefacts, artworks, found objects and/or printed ephemera, which, by their very selection and connection, creates a sense of factual/fictional narrative or event.

Theme: Artist and Writer as reliable/unreliable witness. The manipulation of FACT, through careful editing, omission, cropping or misrepresentation creates fiction (possibly continuing to pose as FACT). Equally, it is possible to take FICTION and, by using similar manipulations, create a truth closer to FACT.

Artist marshalling the minutiae. I feel the compulsion to pin stuff down – to hone ideas and opinions – to express something ‘true’. By expressing ideas visually, by describing the parts that make up and pull into clearer focus, a bigger picture, then the point is more clearly defined and understood.

A representor may make a statement which prima facie is technically true; however this may tell only half the story. If a statement of fact is made but the representor fails to include information which would significantly alter the interpretation of this fact, then a misrepresentation may have occurred.

Mimêsis involves a framing of reality that announces that what is contained within the frame is not simply real. Thus the more “real” the imitation the more fraudulent it becomes. The less “real” the less fraudulent. In art history, “mimesis”, “realism” and “naturalism” are used, often interchangeably, as terms for the accurate, even “illusionistic”, representation of the visual appearance of things.

Exhibition Space #1

Libraries (and/or the classic Village Hall) have a history of displaying and presenting FACTUAL information. Local events and histories are presented regularly. Green felt table-tops and pins. Subvert and reorder/reinvent in order to distort the audience perception of the work. Present as ‘evidence’ or the findings of ‘an investigation’.

Exhibition Space #2

Light industrial/laboratory/lock-up spaces will be sourced in order to distort the perception of the work. Presented as ‘evidence’ or the findings of ‘an investigation’. Crazy walls.