Box Art
By Simon de Mare
A Holiday
A holiday as a futile escape from the reality of life, with the office behind the curtain on the right, clouds of bills and bad news above, and a besuited official lurking behind the grass trees in the left hand corner.
The Unattainable
A homage to Alexander Calder. A mobile with suspended flint stones and a mirror behind. The mirror encourages the viewer to become involved in the "mis en scene", as a giant peering into a theatre set, who is playing games with whom?
A "Long" Walk
A collage of bits found during a walk from Malham Cove to Malham Tarn in the Yorkshire Dales, June 2011, and very much in the style of the artist Richard Long.
Homage to Robert Indiana
Robert Indiana's iconic "Love", boxed with a mirror behind and thus involving the viewer. The two small figures add a story line.
A Henry Moore, I presume.
Small figures discussing a found flint from Wiltshire, again with a mirror, detail below.
Mudlarking on the Thames
Fragments found on the foreshore of the River Thames at Queenshythe, on the north bank opposite Tate Modern. These fragments include 18th. century slipware. 19th. century blue & white ware, broken clay pipes and animal bones. A homage to the Boyle family, artists who specialised in highly detailed representations of inconsequential parts of the earth's surface.
Come Down at Once and Apologise to the Nice Mr. Fontana.
Very much a homage to the Italian artist Lucio Fontana, with a small figure climbing out of one of his iconic slashed canvases. See detail below.
Clay Pipe Cliffs
A mirror box with figures sunbathing on the cliff made of fragments of clay pipes, yet overlooked by a figure on the far right, guardian or voyeur.
Detail below.
Hirstian Sands
A collection of sand samples from my travels, including The Sahara Desert, a beach at Lombok in Indonesia and Death Valley in California. Each Muji bottle acts as an "aide memoir" to an explore. It is a homage to both Damian Hirst and Mark Dion.
Danger in the Deep
A drift wood denizen of the deep; with a holiday maker first noticing the remains of the denizen's last meal, a bone.
The Conversation
Between man and wasp, detail below.
This Way, Boys.
A walk up a moss covered hill overlooked by a wild barley tree.
The Via Sacra to Peter Jones
The route from our house to Peter Jones on Sloane Square, the centre of the universe for my wife.
The Baby Tree
Porcelain figures from France with a tree made from a thyme branch found in the limestone hills above Nice.
Out of Arcadia into Dystopian Efficiency
A man with a briefcase is leaving a Claudian landscape through a gate of drift wood fragments found on the Thames by Battersea Bridge.
Homage to Rene Magritte
A model aeroplane coming out of a dolls house's fireplace, referencing Magritte's famous painting of a train coming out of a fireplace; "La Duree Poignardee". There is a reproduction of the painting on the mantlepiece.
Two Men in a Bleak Landscape
Somewhat in the style of Anselm Kiefer two men are at the edge of a forest of painted birch twigs and rusting fence. Is it a memory of a border to Eastern Europe?
The Lorelie
A study of the textures of sun bleached drift wood from the Pett Levels beach in East Sussex, dedicated to Heinrich Heine's "Die Lore-Ley". Detail below.
Are You Pleased to See Me ?
Two whelk shell fragments from the beach in Knokke Zoute, Belgium. Please note, this is a smaller box.
Under the Tansy Trees
A mirrored box with small figures and dried Tansy flowers, memories of umbrella pines.
When Tracey met Grayson
A boxed collage based on a Tracey Emin's drawing "See how They Grow" with sculptures from a vase by Grayson Perry.
Lost in a Forest of Grasses
Trees of dried grasses and sedges with a mirrored background and a couple, lost.
A Wounded Sherd
A Greco-Roman period sherd found in Fayoum district of Egypt.
A Holiday
A second version of this title; with a dried palm flower, flint forms and threatening clouds of bills and bad news.
Archeology?
Squashed cans and bottle tops from the streets of Cairo, how long before rubbish is promoted to archeological status?
Specimens
Three found bones in inverted test tubes, after the artist Mark Dion. A modernistic version of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
The unknown tightrope walker
More of an experiment with framing and collaging old prints, the three figures are watching the tightrope walker above them, who is on a wire.
Victorian Blue and White Ware
Attractive sherds of pottery collected from the foreshore of the River Thames.
Moonlight over Plettenberg Bay
A mirrored memory box of beach combing along Plettenberg Bay in South Africa; with limpet shell towers, a sand dollar moon and dried flower from the local fynbos.
I Do Like a Good Shrine
A couple discussing a shrine to a Cambodian buddha, the bones for the shrine are from the Thames foreshore.
A Pilgrim Flask
More of an archeological object, a 5th. century pilgrim flask found near St Menas in the Western Desert of Egypt.
Topless Temptation
A further study of drift wood, and experimenting with internal lighting
History Repeats Itself
A box collage featuring George Grosz's "Street Scene Berlin 1928" and the Guardian's protests against corporate greed, 2011.
"Alone at Last"
Eve alone at last in the Garden of Eden, after Richard Dadd, an eccentric Victorian painter who was detained in a mental hospital after killing his father. He specialised in painting dense fairie paintings, see "The Master Fellers Master-Stroke" 1855 in the Tate Gallery. The Queen pop group had a song with the same title, referencing Dadd.
"Running Free in Paradise"
Detail
"Clap the net over the butterfly of the moment", Vita Sackville -West.
My favourite beach in Penang, Malaysia, and only accessible by boat or a two hour walk through the rattan infested jungle.
"A Banker seeking Redemption"
Made from drift wood found around Battersea Bridge in London.
"All wrapped up warm". Our wrapped house on Oakfield Street in the style of Christo and his wife Jean-Claude.
When Csar met Warhol
Both artists were interested in everyday objects. The French artist Csar compressed them, the American Warhol painted them.
"Followers of Lilith"
"Eggshells and a Fern"
"It just came out of my mouth one millisecond before my brain told it not to"
Buttons from Mothers Button Box
Stamps waiting!
"Exploring"
Drift wood with map.
Hope
"Getting to the Top"
Champagne wires and early skyscrapers in New York.
"It is perfectly safe"
With dried toadstools, including Fly Agaric, and Birch bark from Wimbledon Common.
Detail
"In the Hazel Wood"
With a mirror behind.
 |
"A Cabinet of Curiosities" A collection of natural and man made objects found on my travels. Based on a eighteenth century "wunderkammer" it acts as a sort of memory box. |
 |
"Art is Work, Selling it is Art"
Illustrated with "Abstract Painting" by Ad Reinhardt, 1963. in MoMA
 |
"The Three Graces" From the Woman Magazine published in 1959 |
 |
"Nostalgia"
A Schwitters style collage of advertisements from Woman magazine published in 1959.
The Box Art, each priced at £150, are available from;
The Gallery on Oakfield
6 Oakfield Street
London
SW10 9JB
jrsdemare@gmail.com
All the boxes are 25 cms. square
No comments:
Post a Comment