March 2012
With very few exceptions all this work, my entire ouevre indeed, has been destroyed. Lack of storage, apathy - on my
part - and a feeling that I was trapped by my past led to this decision.
The past is the past and the future must contain it but that containment need not be material.
Addendum
The Destruction of Art
What does one do when one has a pile of art, paintings, sculpture, drawings, and one doesn't make art anymore? That was my dilemma. I was happy not to make art anymore, had done it. I was making films, sort of (not yet got into my stride), so you could say I was making art but not of that kind, material art, big art, art that stays on the shelves, leans against the walls, cumbersome art.
I had stopped making stuff.
What do you do with a room full of stuff?
I wasn't living in that room. It was hired and costing me money. It was my studio.
I lived elsewhere.
I could put it into storage or move to a bigger place. The place I was in didn't have the room (big paintings, some as large as 8' x 8', a substantial ammount 4' x 8') but I was happy there, didn't want to move. So, storage. Storage costs were high. The cheapest I could find was a little over £700 a year. What to do with them then?
I couldn't access them to ( ) for exhibitions because it was too inconvenient. I couldn't access the larger ones because that would mean hiring a van. I couldn't 'woodwork' them anyway because I didn't have the workshop space. OK, I could have got hold of the smaller ones.
Could I have let them rumble for a year, let them stay there, see what happens?
I decided to let them go there and then because it was more convenient to smash them there and then than hide them away in a storage container off my patch. I felt like they were
my own children so I destroyed them at home.
wrapping my own arms around them to hold them close and suffocating them
taking them back on board.