Statement on Work
The technology of warfare is another one of my recurrent interests. World War One is especially compelling, its ferocity, futility and the incredible melancholy it evokes.
For a number of years, I have explored WW1 in my work. The box assemblages are an attempt to express my interpretation of the “War Machine” A tribute to the many thousands of soldiers from different countries who laid down their lives during 1914-1918. Whenever I see images taken during WW1 they are always in either sepia or black & white. The soldiers of the western front existed in a monochromatic world threatened with constant discomfort, hunger, pain and death. While Europe was embroiled in Warfare, on the opposite side of the World the days passed relatively peacefully. Blue skies, palm trees and beaches of golden sand. The servicemen of all nationalities must have dreamt of peace in total contrast with what they were ordered to do each day.
My work entitled “Dreamings” explores the idea that the impossible could happen. That these dreams could turn into reality and the soldiers could find themselves in paradise, even if that only takes place within the picture plane of my collages and assemblages. Each of the eight works is related to a particular battle of the war.
The assemblages are made from printed ceramic tiles using a variety of processes; photo silkscreen and photo litho to produce the images. These images are developed in sketchbooks before they are committed to the printing process. The most recent work uses a new ceramic printing process which enables a laser photocopied image to be indelibly printed onto a ceramic surface and has terrific potential for future development. The three dimensional inserts in the boxes are taken from a variety of sources . On some of the earlier work I used the clutch plate of a Trabant motor car (found in a Budapest fleamarket) to make a mould from which I produced ceramic forms to include in the compartments. A young blackbird that had died and dehydrated provided a beautiful ceramic metaphor for the soldiers who were never to attain adulthood. The Medal which was awarded to all participants in WW1 (1914 Victory in Europe medal) and a clip of German Mausser ammunition from which I also made a plaster mould provided the contents of these later works. The wood which makes the frames for the pieces is all reclaimed hardwood.
The printed images are built from a variety of sources, war memorial photographs, cigarette cards, diagrams of various war apparatus; ie the Vickers and Lewis Machine guns used in WW1 in fact anything that visually works with the compositions. The work is quite small in scale The smaller pieces are 46x26 cms the larger pieces are 57x22cms.
Recent concerns are the illegal mining of tin in Indonesia and Malaysia by the indigenous people from these countries and the damage to marine life. The tin is used to make solder in the production of cell phones, tablets and computers by large international corporations. Most recently my attention has been focused on the presence of micro-plastics in the world's oceans and the creatures that live in them.
Paul Mason August 2020
During my postgraduate degree in the early 1980’s my attention was partially focussed on aspects of Head and Facial coverings from Warfare, Ritual, Sport and Theatre. From the Ritual part of this I developed an interest in Natural History and the systems evolved by animals, reptiles, fishes, birds and insects to protect themselves when threatened by natural predation. This research inevitably lead me into many museums and collections where I produced several sketchbooks of drawings and collages from primary sources, looking at human invention and natural evolution.
Contextual references are always an invaluable source of information, looking at the work of other artists and developing an understanding about how they developed their personal ideologies produces rich layers of meaning, interpretation and association.
Max Ernst described the process of collage as “A chance meeting of two or more separate realities on a plane foreign to them both”. The collage novels produced by Ernst ,which involved cutting up Victorian engravings and reassembling them to produce startling juxtapositions and combinations had a disturbing effect.
In visiting many museum collections I became intrigued with the way objects and artefacts were displayed. The exquisitely made boxes and containers made during the 19th and early 20th centuries to house fossil, natural history, mathematical and surgical instruments added further intrigue.
Eduardo Paolozzi stated that” The history of mankind can be written with objects, a continual diary of opposites, man as engineer, nature as fabricator.” Other artists who are pivotal in my development are: Kurt Schwitters, Raoul Haussman, Joseph Cornell and Peter Blake. The common denominator is that they are all collagists.