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Matthew Cort

London
Lives and works in London
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My use of media and techniques is determined by the idea I am exploring at a given time, although the apparently divergent outcomes of this practice generally have the same starting-point: the appropriation of pre-existing artefacts and their re-presentation with some aspect altered significantly through operations such as: recombination; recontextualisation; casting; systematic modification of proportions etc.

I am interested in the ways that such 'carnivalesque' gestures complicate meaning through generating works functioning as multiple propositions, and subvert or generate humour from otherwise sober objects and images. Examples of this include: Car, Height 1:1 (2008) - an object as sculpture/car/biomorph/'customisation' of a car stylist's design; Parapet (1998) - an assemblage of found and fabricated objects that work simultaneously as sculpture/row of sandcastles/extension of 'readymade' building (Screen on the Green Cinema, London); imaginary pages from a book of birds (2008 to date) - watercolour/digital images presented as 'objective' wildlife illustrations that are actually parodies/montages of found images/fantasy bird images.

Through being translated into new artworks, the original artefacts (cars, buildings, instructive illustrations etc.) are liberated from their original functions, gaining new meanings along with reminders of their old ones, thus for example: on being compressed horizontally by a factor of 16, car wheels become 'legs', but still retain their details in compressed form. To varying degrees my use of pre-existing artefacts celebrates the inherent multiplicity of all artworks' authorship. In this, my influences include: industrial design, popular culture, architecture, the historical and neo avant-gardes.

 

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