GLYPHS CIRCA 2000 AD

This body of work examines the relationship of statuary to ideology. It posits that a statue made from a durable material (such as stone or metal) acts to perpetuate the behaviours and attitudes of the real or fictional figure that it represents. A painting of such a statue acts as an “ideological hieroglyph”, a symbol or pictogram we associate with values and ideals.

The paintings were created while listening to a variety of thematically linked audiobooks, and are intended to act as “vessels” for the ideological content of the former. This content is compressed and encrypted in the images and therefore not directly readable, like multiple documents in a ZIP file.

However it is arguably present in the emotional tone and in the “technical narrative” of each work (in the practical decision-making that dictates the application of paint onto the canvas). Through this, a set of varying (sometimes irreconcilably so) worldviews can be abstractly unified to produce a singular outcome, a symbol to which they collectively contribute. An allegorised description of this process is depicted in the text piece, Cadmus, creating a third layer of compression and closing the loop.