Offcut 1 - Mark Sowden

I think of objects as things with edges. The edges separate an object from a landscape and allow the object to be named and moved. If something has uncertain edges, its object-status becomes questionable, ambiguous. These are objects whose identity is not fixed. For this exhibition, I am working with moulding offcuts discarded by a framing shop. I am photographing these offcuts and then cutting the moulding to make a frame for the photograph. The moulding will both be the subject of the photograph and the object that holds it. I hope that the literal edge of the frame will be disrupted by a much more uncertain edge when the viewer begins to perceive multiple layers of time, scale and identity.

Such a hard question because my artistic process is rarely, if ever a separate and defined thing. It is constantly overlapping with, and being informed by, other ways of processing experience and making. I know I am acting creatively when I chase possibilities in an open ended and experimental way to discover what is possible. Art emerges from creative experimentation but can only be understood as Art when it forms a dialogue with other art; when artists in dialogue with other artists. Showing is therefore a vital part of the artistic process. When I make work to show in an art context I try to be conscious of the codes that allow for communication in that world.

The inspiration and impetus for new work is normally a desire to try something out, to see what happens if I process my finds in a particular way. Content emerges through making; it is the meaning that the work carries when it is ready to show. I am wary about claiming a particular content for the work. Content is defined by the viewer as much as the artist. I hope the work contains evidence of my interaction with found objects and helps open up a dialogue around object-identity and the precarious nature of that identity as objects emerge from and dissolve into an elemental physical state and/ or shift their location in conceptual and physical landscapes.

I have a studio but it is not the only place that work gets made. My processes always start outside of the studio as I travel through various landscapes ready to encounter objects that excite my curiosity.  For the past seven years I have returned regularly to the Thames foreshore. For a few hours on a low tide I search this unique landscape looking for material evidence of London’s past. Most things I find are fragmentary and often difficult to identify. They are objects on the point of losing their identity. I gives these objects my attention and process them through photography drawing making and curation. The themes and processes used in my mudlarking practise now closely resemble my Art Practice and often overlap.

I continue to work with objects encountered in the street. Sometimes I take photographs of these objects and sometimes I take the objects themselves, relocating them in spaces where I can process them in different ways. I have a simple studio set up to photograph and draw finds, a computer to process digital images, a making space for casting and clay work and a kiln at work to fire ceramic work. I use shelves and cabinets to curate finds. These are places where objects can meet and interact in new and unexpected ways, grouped together for the first time at this point in time and space.