The Necropolis: Work In Progress

My most recent installation project is the “Necropolis”, a borderless, ever-growing landscape of whitewashed “buildings”: at first glance, it is a literal city of the dead, all mausolea and tombstone and stelae, but tucked amongst them are outbuildings, sheds, and other structures indicative of living human activity. Each structure is simply and almost crudely constructed of discarded items: cardboard, food packaging, cast-offs from the street; their surface-handling, being collaged and drawn on between partially obscuring layers of gesso, both mimics the real-life palimpsest-ing of city walls whilst drawing direct attention to their un-life-like scale. With repetition across an entire landscape of mausolea, the effect is both of mass ornament of multiples but also the distinctiveness of each little structure upon individual scrutiny. The viewer is encouraged to take their own pathway through the Necropolis, removing lids to peer inside, forming their own script of interaction and meaning, experiencing the landscape in its manifold utilities: a repository for grief, a machine for meaning, and a landscape of superimposed pathways of human experience.