Empty Frames (artist's book)

The creative artefact is an artist’s book issued in an edition of 1000.

Through making a series of images intended to work together, the research set out to explore a number of avenues of enquiry. Firstly, to consider ways in which iconic artworks lodge themselves in our memories; to question the value of the particular location in site-specific art; and to enquire into the mechanisms of how presence and absence are experienced in an artwork.

The research began with the question ‘what happens when the ostensible subject of a work of art is removed from documentary photographs of iconic artworks, leaving only the original setting remaining?’ The research was conducted by selecting a number of black and white reproductions of mid to late 20th works of art. The ostensible subjects were then digitally ‘removed’ and the spaces left behind ‘patched’. For instance the spiral jetty was eradicated from a photograph of Robert Smithson’s ‘Spiral Jetty’. The resulting images were then re-captioned using a uniform system of ‘location’ and ‘date’.

In this way a range of new images were created that could not help but have a vestigial connection with the originals. Although other artists have been interested in remaking existing artworks such as Turk’s redrawing of Hogarth’s ‘Gin Lane’, the paradox of removing the work to create the work represents an alternative approach and echoes Rauschenberg’s ‘Erased de Kooning Drawing’ (1953).

Images from the series were included in a group exhibition, Good Riddance, with works by Lawrence Weiner, Jem Finer, Leo Fitzmaurice, Paul Davis, Miles Thurlow and Brown Sierra.

Artist's book published by MOT International, London, 2006. ISBN: 0955406102 / 0-9554061-0-2

• http://www.chelsea.arts.ac.uk/35393.htm