Find
Artist: Chris Leach
Location: Various Castlebar
Title: FIND
Medium: drawing
Date: 2014
Materials: Wood, gesso, pencil, metal poles
Chris’s art practice over the last few years has consistently been about dialogues of scale and perspective. An aspect of recent work has been concerned with highly detailed miniature drawings of cityscapes around the world.
One of the main concerns in the work is how our psychological understanding of the world is formulated by not only direct experience but a sense of space and scale, our ability to navigate the world, the physical parameters of our own personal journeys.
For the FIND project Chris has engaged with a number or businesses and organisations around the centre of Castlebar. He interviewed individuals in each location to find out about the journeys that they have undertaken around the world.
He is interested in how those physical relations overlap and build connections both for the individual concerned and in their understanding of how the world is constructed and how those connections relate to the local social structure.
Miniature drawings of each location have been produced. As the work is very small scale, the works are installed discreetly within a particular environment so that although not immediately apparent they require a degree of investigation to find them.
For the accompanying exhibition at the Linenhall Arts Centre, he displayed the background and research information regarding each of the drawings. This work sought to outline for the audience the wider conceptual basis of the work and would also include transcripts of interviews with each participant outlining the reasons for choosing their particular locations, along with images and accompanying documentation.
This work would form an integral part of the ‘complete’ artwork, allowing me to highlight aspects and information that although perhaps inferred in the drawings would clarify and expand on the research information gathered from the project.