Crux

The artworks in this exhibition are intentionally quite simple images and objects.  They utilise pattern and repetition and permutation to generate a series of diverse outcomes from a single point of departure.  At the crux of the matter is a cross.

When I set out to make these works I considered that they were to be displayed in a church hall, and I felt that works featuring crosses would be at home in the church.  Simultaneously, crosses also marked some important moments in modern art in the journey away from symbolism and narrative and towards abstraction, formalism and conceptualism.

For me the works are playful experiments in materiality.  I have taken a sculptural approach to working with materials and formats traditionally associated with painting.  I have used mass produced and mundane materials to laboriously create things by hand.  I have assembled materials in counter-intuitive ways that transform and also reveal the character and properties of those same materials.

What I had not entirely anticipated was the pervasive symbolism that inhabits the works, which has revealed itself partly through talking with others about them.  Though there are no crucifixes in this body of work, it has proven difficult to create a cross without reference to the cross.  This realisation informed the development of some other works also exhibited in this show.

These other works touch upon the symbolism of crosses in other contexts.  These are crosses that both represent and erase the particularities of people and places.  They are crosses that have their origins as symbols of sanctuary and salvation, but have since presided over conquest and oppression.

This exhibition featuring crosses was to be on display in the church hall during Easter, but was postponed like many others due to the threat of the Coronavirus pandemic.  Perhaps in the wake of this global crisis it is a fitting and challenging time and place to interrogate both the power and the emptiness of the symbols we hold on to, to make our way in the world.

Duncan McKay, May 2020

Services

Art writing
Consulting