Ideal City rebuilds sections of four paintings by JMW Turner as a way of reflecting on my feelings of alienation in the English landscape. On arriving in London from Canada in 1997, my first experience was one of culture shock and profound claustrophobia. Unable to photograph in the way I was accustomed to, I turned my 35mm camera down towards the surface of London’s streets, and up towards the sky. The resulting images were printed out as 35mm contact prints which were used as individual ‘pixels’ to rebuild the enlarged sections of four different c19th landscape paintings by JMW Turner. The resulting abstract work comprises four separate panels (each approximately 2.5’ x 5’) created by sewing contact prints together. The piece, which took several months to complete, transformed my usual practice of encountering the landscape on foot into a labour-intensive act taking place almost entirely in the confined space of the studio.

C-type and cibachrome contact prints and thread on metal frame , 1998