John Mathews

Ireland

Through my work I deal with terms of absence – the energy, emotion and movement left behind in a room of objects when its occupation and use has ceased. These things are at one point lost and innocent through their dormancy, but on another level they are carried along in our memories. Life, however encrusted, is still present. Using a catalogue of fragmented imagery I want to manipulate these hidden expressions of lipstick traces, dust marks, missing captioned photographs from a lost album, or captured shadows cast at one specific point of the day and night. Twisting and turning these elements to bring the viewer into the heat and restlessness of an individual lost and running through rooms and streets. Exploring, reaching for reason, searching for an emotion through motion and a place to come to ground within the shadows and turmoil of distance. A person scratching through and lost within the hidden city, an eternal movement without action, in effect, chasing light.

TWIST, TRAIL, BURN

Trying to escape through distance, not wanting to go anywhere but just to keep moving, the journey in effect becomes the destination. Finding what it means to take a detour into an unknown place. Hunting and the shadow side of travel, running into or out of ourselves. Taking flight in suggestion and a journey can begin. Comfort in not knowing what’s next, and the transition that is triggered by a break in static reason. The yearnings, violence and desires lingering through any place seem to float to the surface at night and partly dissolve during the day. Trailing across cities, sifting through its debris and trying to put the pieces together as if in some elusive, exotic an infinite puzzle, only to find reason exists within us. To stop feeling and thinking and to just run.

(Text: heroes + holies catalogue, 2002)