Marcus Jefferies

Artist statement

Jefferies maintains a diverse practice that incorporates model making techniques, photography and sculpture. Current work centres on the architectural model and the production of fictional archives.

One aspect of his work involves the dichotomy between the photographic image and the actual events and inherited memories that accompany them. This has taken  form in the production of mono-chromatically painted figures, model buildings and objects - displaced from their historical setting and transplanted into new situations. This act of relocation serves to question our nostalgic relationship to the past by creating an unsettling paradox.

Another area of interest involves the making of functionless model buildings and structures. These artworks contain certain cultural and historical references, witch include the typographical images of Bernd and Hilla Becher, Brutalist design and the 'dust bowl' photographs of walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. In making three dimensional models Jefferies sought to re-contextualise the image and give it a physical presence that embodies past events but also has an independent existence as an art object.

A common thread linking these Architecturally inspired sculptures are the use of forgotten, overlooked, awkward and sometimes ugly additions to the built environment - " I like the sense of disorder that architectural anomalies bring to the homogenised urban landscape. In absorbing this idiosyncratic vernacular I hope to give voice to to an alternative sense of beauty through the appreciation of the odd and incongruous spaces and places around us."