Minotaur
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Minotaur
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Bull Leaper 1
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Caged
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Their moment
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She passes by
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Night Castle
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Meeting at the Pumping Station
Sold -
Minotaur Scan
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Minotaur Eye
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In Time
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Transfixed 1
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Transfixed 2
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Here and There
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Slouching towards Bethlehem
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In the nuclear labyrinth
This series of works, about the half-bull, half-human Minotaur imprisoned in the Cretan labyrinth, is a long meditation on our attitudes to the complex animal elements within each of us and the way in which we enclose ourselves in labyrinths.
While working on these pieces, new imagery has emerged from the process of making, such as a strange, glowing Tardis-like box and a form which appears variously to be a heart, a rooted seed, an embryo or a jellyfish.
As in the original Greek myth, horror and playfulness are both present, in settings where known places fuse with those depicted by great image-makers of the past. Each work is also an experiment in using a different kind of visual language.
Bull Leaper 1 is inspired by the bull-leaping frescoes in rhe Minoan Cretan palace of Knossos, which is believed to contain the labyrinth in which the Minotaur was imprisoned.
Their Moment is not an endorsement of bullfighting, but does respond to the moment of tension between bullfighter and bull.
She Passes By shows the Minotaur glimpsing his sister Ariadne. She will assist the Athenian Theseus to kill him, by providing him with a red thread that will enable him to trace his way out of the labyrinth.
That red thread appears again in Night Castle. The figure in the sky is Europa, who was carried to Crete by the god Zeus, disguised as a bull. and raped by him, becoming the mother of Minos. His wife, Pasiphae, conceived the Minotaur by mating with the Cretan Bull while hidden within a hollow cow that the Athenian inventor Daedalus built for her, after Poseidon cursed her to fall in love with the bull, due to Minos failing to sacrifice it to Poseidon as he had promised. Visually this work is influenced by El Greco's painting of the Immaculate Conception in Toledo.
The title of Slouching Towards Bethlehem uses a quotation from W. B Yeats's poem The Second Coming.
The final work was inspired by visiting the derelict spaces on Orford Ness used for testing parts of nuclear bombs.
The background to Transfixed 1 is white, not grey as shown in the image.
While working on these pieces, new imagery has emerged from the process of making, such as a strange, glowing Tardis-like box and a form which appears variously to be a heart, a rooted seed, an embryo or a jellyfish.
As in the original Greek myth, horror and playfulness are both present, in settings where known places fuse with those depicted by great image-makers of the past. Each work is also an experiment in using a different kind of visual language.
Bull Leaper 1 is inspired by the bull-leaping frescoes in rhe Minoan Cretan palace of Knossos, which is believed to contain the labyrinth in which the Minotaur was imprisoned.
Their Moment is not an endorsement of bullfighting, but does respond to the moment of tension between bullfighter and bull.
She Passes By shows the Minotaur glimpsing his sister Ariadne. She will assist the Athenian Theseus to kill him, by providing him with a red thread that will enable him to trace his way out of the labyrinth.
That red thread appears again in Night Castle. The figure in the sky is Europa, who was carried to Crete by the god Zeus, disguised as a bull. and raped by him, becoming the mother of Minos. His wife, Pasiphae, conceived the Minotaur by mating with the Cretan Bull while hidden within a hollow cow that the Athenian inventor Daedalus built for her, after Poseidon cursed her to fall in love with the bull, due to Minos failing to sacrifice it to Poseidon as he had promised. Visually this work is influenced by El Greco's painting of the Immaculate Conception in Toledo.
The title of Slouching Towards Bethlehem uses a quotation from W. B Yeats's poem The Second Coming.
The final work was inspired by visiting the derelict spaces on Orford Ness used for testing parts of nuclear bombs.
The background to Transfixed 1 is white, not grey as shown in the image.