Gear series

2019 ink drawings and magnesium cliché prints
on Hasegawa Kouzo and Ganpi papers.

“Recently, for a Fine Press Poetry book, I began using another kind of template, the theme and highly graphic nature of Sineád Morrissey’s poem “The Italian Chapel” having pushed me in a different direction. I felt it was necessary to somehow relate the process of drawing with the poem’s historical context: a group of POWs trying to construct a chapel, using whatever materials they could find, mostly of military provenance. In the process of exhaustive research I stumbled across a photo of a gear wheel from a sunken British submarine. I attempted to use its shape as a template, cutting an outline out of cardboard. The circular drawings resulting from it have a pronounced sense of volume, with elements of extreme order contrasting with moments of chaos. There is something industrial about it, but also something organic.”

Photos: Uwe Walter, Leipzig/Berlin