Peter A Leigh – Artist’s Statement. 2020.
My work is concerned with the re-evaluation and investigations of breaking down of materials and rethinking them as objects to then reconstruct them developing a new meaning. These objects are commonplace items – more recently the structures of canvases. The references to painting via coloured tape travels and traverses on both surfaces of the canvas, by manipulating the structure and reordering the flow of colours in a fractured way, the fluorescence exaggerates pathways also on three dimensional surfaces, as the colours encounter and avoid, beginning a diverse three-dimensional dialogue. The construction of the pieces makes for easy portability, so reconfigurations after installing the work is strategic and adaptable, reacting to conditions when reflecting and considering.
Links to Arte Povera (then as now) point to a necessity of the gathering and treatment of non- traditional materials. So, what lies within a domestic setting can be transformed as viable artists materials, using this approach of work also relating to colour, the utility of green and yellow electrical tape and colours of other pre-designed vinyl tapes as a ready-made palette. These bright colours suggest at times emblems and flags of journeys in the Andalusian Hills and the maritime communication ensigns, the latter connecting to the Futurist’s Dazzle ships.
Camouflage seeking ambiguity. The use of the words ‘visible camouflage’ is of course paradoxical, a concealment and abstraction on display, magnifications of a minimalist space so concealment is almost impossible and the disguise of what is in plain sight. Jagged linear colours travel on surfaces, acting in a dividing way to demonstrate to the viewer what is there but what is not immediately seen.
Contradictions always occur, art’s paradox is that it reveals and conceals at the same time, visible camouflage is another strand to this way of thinking and seeing into this reflection of ourselves.
DR / Peter a Leigh, 2020
