Artist Statement
The Same As It Never Was is a body of work developed in response to images realized by drawing or collaborating with a photocopier — a device whose characteristics I have utilized in various ways for some time. Particular to this work is the circumstance of how the images came about, as a consequence of mechanical failure. With only a black sheet of paper under the hood, two unexpected accidents, the first being developer exhaustion, and the second a drum-blade malfunction, produced strange and unexpected patterns. A subversion of the photocopiers standard function to copy or reproduce a provided document or picture. It was never built to create its own imagery.
The accidental generation of something from nothing mirrors our own ontological circumstance, how did we, or more significantly the universe originate and is there meaning to our existence? A grand proposition for a humble, obsolete black and white analogue photocopier. The artworks in this exhibition examine the perception of actuality more closely as the photocopy accidents are rendered in different techniques across a variety of mediums. The movement of one’s body in relation to the work creates an illusion of sensory motion. This is apparent in a juxtaposition of seriality and stop-motion animation, the former requiring the movement of one’s eyes across multiple still panels and the latter instead requiring body stillness whilst the work appears to move.
Rendering in clear silicon, gloss/matte surface contrast and iridescent pigment also facilitates a different kind of movement - between something and nothing - through appearance and disappearance. What is there one moment may be gone the next. A peculiar transformation considering the origin of the photocopy image, from failure or technological malfunction, out of nowhere, something from nothing or is it nothing from something…?
David Hawley
2015