Chris Wright

Artist statement

Through installation, expanded sculpture, photography and film and sometimes pseudo-scientific experiments, I am trying to create a dialogue between space and place using interventions and interruptions as part of a site-specificity that explores in-between spaces, inside and outside, nowhere and somewhere. I use temporary, ephemeral and provisional interruptions, to locate, re-locate and re-contextualise territory referencing what has been, what is or what could be, the past, the present and the future and where it intersects with the human relationship. They often refer to incidental happenings that create a transformation of objects and reflect on society and its ‘habits. The notion of absence, as possibility rather than lack, is an underlying theme within the concepts of territory, whether historical, political, geographical, cultural as well as how it is colonized, altered, used and navigated and, relating to this, place and placelessness.

My aims are for an experimental approach that engages with the viewer and to develop the critical thinking that connects practice and theory. I would locate my practice close to the Altermodern which is, as Bourriard says ‘read as a hypertext; artists translate and transcode information from one format to another, and wander in geography as well as in history’ (Tate Triennial Exhibition, 2008). Thus the work is the result of sustained enquiry into the nature of space that draws on a wide-ranging theoretical discourse.

The methodology is observation and reflection, not only how place looks but how it feels, sounds and even smells. I document through drawing, text, photography and film that becomes the basis for studio development. From here, exhibition material is gathered and tested both in conventional and unconventional spaces. However, the ‘cultures of display’ are important. Viewer engagement is often necessary to complete the work. This I see as releasing the boundaries of an object by the actions of one thing on another, engaging the viewer in the slow, insidious process

Much of my recent work has taken the form of ambiguous structures that draw their inspiration from temporary and often ephemeral constructions that were briefly glimpsed from public transport during a journey following the Mekong River alternating between the countries of Thailand and Laos. These created impressions but no hint of function or process of construction. This has been part of a three year-long project that has taken many different forms and materials but has eventually returned to bamboo, the original material. The ambiguity and flux within the most recent work reflects similar fluxes within border zones. New work is developing using different approaches to place and placelessness that includes engaging with scientific ideas such as particles and their ability to be here and there at the same time creating new questions about place such as if the particles are in two places at once does that mean that it is the same place or two different places?