'Ours, Insurrection' - Previous Works - Samstag Jeffrey Smart Commission

‘Children of Production’ is comprised of 43 noodle forms knitted into each other to create a large cellular-like, or orgiastic mass. Even though the work uses the bedsheet as a measure in relation to the body to determine the scale of the individual parts, the culmination of the parts relates more to the micro-scale of intercellular relations. The choice of muted bodily colours acts to defuse readings of power by giving the work, although made up of difference, a softness via tonal homogeny...

...The-mass-as-singular-form seeks to generate a gentleness at the newly constructed surface generated by the composite nature of the object and plays with how surface can also extend into a form and is not always a singular event—in this engagement with where surface lies, the work draws on fears of interconnectedness being expressed in contemporary politics...

...In line with an extimate thinking, the work suggests that the external or visible are connected to the internal or non-visible and vice-versa, and that it is this circular situation that leads to a totality of form. The zips act to suggest that each individual part also has an accessible interior within the communally constructed interior. The title suggests that all forms of production are also reproductive and connected to legacy.

Children of Production     2026
Second hand bedsheets, polycotton thread, zips, expanded Polystyrene beads.
43 parts, dimensions variable.

Installation view: Figure and Ground at Sydenham International

‘Limitation and Expanse’ uses 11 bedsheets stitched into a single flat surface that spans the entire ceiling space and is laced to the wall mimicking lashing that secures nets used in civic safety structures. The colours of the sheets were chosen to poetically reference and draw attention to the sky as an object of contrast—one that is both a restrictive barrier and also provider of shelter...

...The sheets stitched into a single span suggest the interconnectedness of things and present a form where figure and ground are dispersed through a single object—one which is also all surface. The stitching lines that track the outline of each sheet as they overlap, bring to the surface the interior of its laminate construction...