Through the Cracks

Stockyard Gallery, Foster. August 2012

This exhibition is loosely based around some lines from a Leonard Cohan song, “ring the bells that still can ring,  forget your perfect offering, there’s a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.

I have been chasing the imperfect, the cracked, the fragile. The transient beauty that comes as the material is in the process of returning to the earth. The crack and holes, that which is missing, let us through to the place just beyond the surface. The world that, as artists, we are always reaching for, and, if we sit still enough we can partially see.

The pieces in this exhibition show the “push and pull” effect of the creative process. With some pieces I have reached out beyond my structured, practical background to pTresent a raw, unaltered section of material, just as I have found it and take the courage to say, this is a valid, beautiful art work. Then there are others where I have gone back into my woodworking background but with a new perspective. Even if you wanted to, you can never go back to where you were before. Many of these pieces are at the edge where I am not sure myself whether they great art or literally “rubbish”. All I can say is that at the time of making they sung to and nourished me.

My hope is that some of this nourishment, something of this song will come through to some of you as you look through the cracks.