Study: Location Thames path south east

Study: Tenement Stool

Study: Cartop seat

Album Art, Artist unknown

Study: Location - dolphin, Thames

Study: Location - beach tyres and mini pier

Study: Gritty car park beach

The tarmac and the drying water residue on the deteriorated and rubbled ground visually echoes the tide mark and wash of a beach.

Study: More wasteland carpark seats

Study: Smoking seat blown over in high winds

Prototype: Beautant - Beautiful Freaks - Slinky Leg

Distinguishing features and hidden beauty, appearences and discovery. A quirky but technically well constructed form draws the eye to the one odd leg which reveals the added detail to the underside of the chair reflected in the display surface.



















the things that live under the chair, chewing gum, scribbles and screws

Study: Hallway seat

Prototypes: Two working prototypes

Working prototypes exploring the potential in designs created to either physically/spatially cut the individual sitter off from the immediate environment using the encompassing arms and the kissing chair that looks as though it will be good to entwine the legs of the two sitters to add to the visual clutter of the many chair legs.

Study: Moses, Old Kent Road

Study: Childs chair left on fence

Prototype: Circular comfy seat

The next step from the circular seat prototype, upholstered and ready go on to final prototype stage

Study: Smashed kids chair

Study: Junk

Study: Highrise chairs on balcony

Study: Chained up chairs

Study: Chair hidden in ivy

Study: Missing seat

Ominous by its absence the missing seat suggests some sort of catastrophic intervention, a result of intent or design. As a design fault of course eventually the structural weak plastic will give way under routine subjegation to the rigours of the average British physique a result of the environment these objects are destined for.

The chair has come to symbolise the individual. The use of a chair as a weapon of the discontented is poingant not just barbaric.

As an object of destructive intent the chair has its place in the volatile history throughout British history from props in hangings to missiles in the stadiums across the country (to be replicated abroad, who can forget scenes of British hooligans lobbings chairs at startled and bemused hosts in numerous competitions)

Study: Street chair Bath

Study: Collapsable

Study: Housebound

Study: Chair face

Study: Collapsed chair

Study: Wheelchair

Study: Scene Extra

locked up
















behind a facade













behind bars

The Tranquility of Solitude

"The tranquility of solitude" this line for me sums up the connection between the chaotic complexity of life and the peace one can find there. The lines is from the Jam song Thats Entertainment - "two lovers kissing amongst the scream of midnight". Or Damien Hirst's Tranquility of Solitude, a homage to Francis Bacon and his studies of his lover George Dyer.

The Jam song talks about struggling as an artist in the entertainment industry and the stark contrasts between perceptions of successs and the reality of attaining this. I think the Francis Bacon studies of his lover and the homage by Hirst talk of the same tensions between ideal and reality, between beauty and grotesque. For me one continously interesting element is the circus of grotesque that hides in the shadows of "ideal" and I have persevered to explore this through the beautiful freaks prototypes (ongoing).

The deformed and grotesque, the freedoms and benefits that imperfection guaruntees has been an increasingly penetrative motif for the past 20 years gradually creeping into contemporary representation of humans and the human condition. Inverted Darwinian principles applied to products and social Darwinism heralded as entertainment. This includes freaky celebs that congregate with the grotesque under the auspicious banner of "reality".

The celebration of the unnervingly different. This is an interesting element I see in Nina Saunders work,

andy lock photography came my way by chance, the V&A's secret little photography grotto, containing not just Richard Leoroyd's amazing studies but Andy Locks "Orchard Park"

a perfect study of a condemned housing estate (here is another review and one of his best images

Prototype: Fat leg

Added to previous protoype entry

put arc wood from fold up chair as back, loop paper from arm to arm and behind either side of the wooden arc and fix sprung seat with red illustrations on black. Something about cycles that makes you lie down as you read it. Need a fat legged recliner really! the text could go right out of site forcing the user to get out of the seat and the end should reflect that change of position / stand point / view...

In Damien Hirsts work he deals with life/death the life cycle but the work I was interested in was inspired by and compared to Francis Bacon "Hirst has openly acknowledged his debt to Bacon, absorbing the painter's visceral images and obsessions early on and giving them concrete existence in sculptural form" The Tranquility of Solitude (For George Dyer) triptych (detail)

Study: Louise Borgeois

Louise Borgeos, Tate modern Unilever Series...

Prototype: Mirror chair

Prototype: Slinky leg

not a prayer - guantanemo

use high strength magnets in guantanemo prayer stools to fit tetris bits together...

There is nothing more human than to misappropriate oneness so that it confines the freedom of solitude to the prison of the mind.