Chance Encounters 2023-

"as beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table"  
Comte de Lautréamont

The above text was discovered by the French surrealist André Breton when reading a book by Lautréamont, and through Breton's influence this textual fragment became foundational to the surrealist doctrine of objective chance. 

I first became aware of this text and its connection with Surrealism when I was an art student many years ago. It had a significant influence on my interest in the arrangement and juxtaposition of elements, or objects, when constructing an image.

This influence may be most easily observed in the photographs under 'US IMAGES' on this website. That said I can also see this same influence, at times, in my Australian work particularly in the Made Mountains, Duologue, and this Chance Encounters suite.

Chance Encounters is about the bringing together of objects that we do not often see together. It involves poetic-play on my part that is designed to surprise and to engender a certain freshness in the visual experience. 

These object combinations only seem fully complete to me when the words of the title also have a playful connection. A Carpet, Four Stools, and a Stack of Stones is an example of what I am suggesting. The icing on the proverbial cake for me is that three words in the title begin with 'St'! 

This enjoyment of words that have structural connections is, not infrequently, the earth from which the ideas for these pieces evolve. It is very early days for this suite of images. The idea is not new to me but, thus far, the imagery is relatively slow in coming to the fore. I am putting this work up as if I was pinning it up on my studio wall to view and learn from. Like all of my work I hope it will engender comments from people who may visit my studio or the website.