I have made a series of glue pylons, which have been shown in London, Sweden & San Francisco. Pylons, like construction cranes, are strong, dependable forms that are all around us and have grown into a similar obsession with me. They draw their way through our landscapes, at once jaw-dropping in stature, yet potentially missable in their frequency. Also like pylons, they have a phallic form, are constructed from steel (a serious material) and inhabit masculine arenas of engineering and the power industry. I took the rigidity of the pylon form and deconstructed it, subverting their strength and redrawing this systematic, engineered form with an organic, low-tech intuition. As my familiarity with them grew, so did their size and apparent structural faults, though this is an illusion, as the glue sculptures are strengthened with hidden perspex armatures.
The subtext of weakness, imperfection and wrongness, increased in importance through the series. They can be connected up in various ways, depending on venue & number: from a linear form of drawing to a chaotic web of cables far removed from the reality of carrying our power supply.
I have also made a large drawing of pylons: 1.5 m tall by 5.8 long. A homage to the diversity of pylons and their relationship with the figure Pylon Drawing reads like a comic without narrative as the frames cover close ups , group shots , portraits, details etc. Pylon drawing is as close to the comics as it is to the glue sculptures.
