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malcolmtait.co.uk                                                                       text three


A statement relating to a series of four paintings completed in 2006. (Numbers 0001 - 0004 in the historical section.)


On fleeting moments.

I am interested in the ongoing process of being; individuals and communities are always ‘becoming’ something new; the four works are concerned with fleeting links connecting the temporal events within a single corporeal space and document minor events within this ongoing development.

“A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island, each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before. Young or old, man or woman, rich or poor, a person is always located at ‘nodal points’ of specific communication circuits, however tiny these may be. Or better, one is always located at a post through which various kinds of messages pass.                              

                                                                    Jean Francois Lyotard.

Each of the works depicts short-lived nodal points set down in permanent locations, these take the form of coffee or tea cup stains or in “Tower Gardens” it is a gaudy green plastic fork (left on a park bench), the type provided with your fish and chips in many chip shops. Each of these documented events have  short life-spans within each space; the table stains perhaps five minute before they are cleaned away by a waiter, the chip fork perhaps twelve to twenty four hours before removed by park attendants. The ‘Tower Gardens’ in the title is a quite spot in Skegness where at night perhaps young couples seek privacy or lonely people a quit place to examine there thoughts. Because of the anonymous nature of the forks arrival in the space much as we imagine countless scenarios the only certainty it provides is a temporal link within the space, any imaginings we may have are perhaps a reflection of our own present concerns other that any accurate appraisal of the event. 

The titles all detail the time each stain or event was recorded photographically the paintings were created at later dates, an important aspect of this recording was its anonymity, there is no record of who left the stain or item.  

Secondary aspects of the events recorded are there apparent insignificance, a condition frequently encountered in contemporary being; also there is the desire to wipe the marks on the painting, perhaps indicative of our desire for pristine designer spaces devoid of the unpleasant detrital reminders of life.


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