Acqua

Abstract with music by Kevin MacLeod / Incompetec

DNA Furniture

I've adapted a couple of unstretched canvasses from my DNA project to create three dimensional domestic sculptures.  The iconography of the paintings relates directly to my own paternal DNA. I am in the house.

DNA Self-Portrait 3

Here is the latest in the installation series DNA Self-Portraits. For this work I have projected the moving DNA of one of my painting in black and white onto the surface of an 8ft meteorological balloon.  As with the previous work in this series the pieces will form part of a larger installation incorporating all the pieces in this series. As the work unfolds I'll be adding audio elements as appropriate.

Smoko Alfred Place South Melbourne

A couple of weeks ago I put a photo into a Guardian UK and Photographers Gallery London photo challenge set by Cornelia Parker.  The theme was smokers. This photo appeared on the Guardian website and is now part of the media wall at the Photographers Gallery and will form part of their permanent archive.

 

Smoko Alfred Place South Melbourne.jpg

DNA Self-Portrait 2

As a follow up to my last post here is the second of the DNA self-portraits I recently created using the process outlined in the previous post.

DNA Self-Portraits

The research I have been doing into my Y (Male) DNA has led me to understand that I'm part of Haplogroup R1b and Subclade R1b (DF27 and Z196).  The only exact match I have been able to find after searching all databases is at the level of 20 out of a possible 111 markers. This means that mathematically there is every likelihood I and this other individual had a most recent common ancestor in the 13th century.

So here I am, adrift on my genetic iceberg. There's an obvious reason. Most people on earth don't put genetic DNA genealogy high on their agenda.  

During the research into my DNA, I painted a couple of large ( 2 metres X 3 metres) white, abstract works on unstretched canvass using acrylic paint and water so the surface bulged and wrinkled becoming three dimensional to form reliefs.  I decided to put letters and numbers corresponding to my own DNA on the canvasses. They seemed to describe a very long journey out of Africa, across continents and many thousands of years, punctuated by generations spent in refuges during the last Ice Age in Northern Europe.

I was working on a series of large close-up panning shots on video in black and white of the surface of several of the paintings that were in my last exhibition.  When I looked at the footage it was as if I was looking at the DNA of the paintings themselves; what lay under the skin, the magnified images of the brushstrokes themselves and the texture of the canvass.  I had the idea of projecting these rather spectral moving images onto the surface of the white paintings.  

I re- recorded the projections onto the paintings from an acute camera angle so as to throw into relief the three-dimensional surface features of the paintings and create another visual layer. Finally I projected each of the two videos as loops onto the corresponding paintings. This whole process I realised was one of mutation.  I'd taken elements of my DNA, mixed them with the DNA of my paintings to create my own Genetic Self-Portraits. The DNA Self-Portrait 1 below represents only an idea of the live experience which has been designed as part of an upcoming installation project.