Ben Lloyd

Artist statement

My work can be seen through a spectrum of belief: from a disregard of connections or narrative, through works that are reconciliatory of different viewpoints, to conviction in issues or their antitheses.

Empire Kiosk is a reconciliatory object from Sierra Leone, which mediates between the cultures that gave birth to Freetown and its people.  The Kiosk is a celebration of Creolization and its references track history from British colonialism through independence to the 21^st C globalised world. 

Empire Kiosk was modelled on the 'Mobile phone Credit and Charging Centres' of Freetown I experienced during my time there as a volunteer teacher. These kiosks connected me to my family back home and so I became part of a community also connecting to family in neighbouring countries or overseas; through economic migration or exile from the civil war.

Fragments from the Landsker Line archive takes as its starting point the antithesis of ownership.  I stole stones from the string of Norman castles of Pembrokeshire to illustrate this. These were displayed as if in an archaeological dig site office, numbered and corresponding to pins in maps, logs of stones taken, and tourist pamphlets declaring the castles full of wonder and awe.

The tourist poked around in the fantasy, half truths and murky waters of the tourist allegiance. The work was installed in room 10, Warpool Court Hotel, St. Davids.  This enabled it to be art in the social realm as the viewers were invited to sit on the bed for tea and biscuits and enter conversations about local tourism.

Don’t you worry about a thing and the new The Welsh Series poke fun at beliefs, supposed truths and romantic notions. They use empathetic found objects that pull on a collective conscience. 

Ghost Waltz, I Feel Love no.27 and many of my paintings focus on our struggling disbelief in narrative and our apathy, they depict the disconnect of our generation as a disparate collection of signs.