Steven Claydon

Continually thinking of my love for science fiction and how that can be translated into contemporary ideas for work, I was please to find artist Steven Claydon. A review of one of his exhibitions in the UK reminded me of Arthur Ganson’s responses to my work in saying they look like relics from a future culture or a culture from the future that had a hidden past. In Frieze magazine a review of his show ‘Fear of a Planet’ states that, his pieces were installed in a semi-darkened space, creating the impression that they might be precious relics of an unknown civilization. This is interesting considering I have only ever shown my work in a more traditional lighting. I think it would be interesting to take in effect the space my work is show in more, and what the effects of darkness, or colored bulbs, or low lighting would have on my own work. I like that Claydon’s work does not make reference to a specific ethnographic region. His works are other worldly and at the same time hint to current or familiar sources by use of renditions of existing logos.

Contributors to Vitamin-3D in commenting on Claydon’s works talk about his use of materials and how it sets up an incongruity that emphasizes how artifacts and monuments can easily be fabricated to manipulate memory. This fictionalization of the past through false evidence dislocates reality, reconstituting history, which Claydon defines as a lateral mesh of causal events and absorbed protocol that informs our nature and forms our cultural conditioning. I think working in this way opens up a great opportunity for narrative. Narrative in my work is something that I think could easily take place the more I delve into my love for the science fiction and engage myself with the materials that represent that interest.

Adajania, Nancy, and Anne Ellegood. Vitamin 3-D: New Perspectives in Sculpture and Installation. London: Phaidon, 2009. Print.

Wood, Catherine. "Steve Claydon." Frieze Sept. 2005. Frieze. Sept. 2005. Web.