ARTISTS TALKING

# 1 [2 December 2008]

'... the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last' there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like'. From Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Melville wrote these words towards the end of the 19th Century. It is somewhat doubtful that he could have anticipated the advances in underwater photography and film that, only recently, have allowed us to see the true, otherworldly form of the living Sperm Whale. But however patient the diver behind the camera, and however clear the water, we are still left with an image on the cathode ray tube that, awesome though it might appear in the imagination, still gives no true impression of the scale of a beast that, in the words of Milton, seems 'like a moving land'. It is the issue of scale that will allow a life-sized portrait of a living Sperm Whale to approach the condition of, if not exactly landscape, then certainly monumental sculpture. It is my hope that the drawing will offer a substantial challenge not only to myself but also to the viewer. The challenge, on one level, is quite simple: just how do we measure up to this thing? Moby Dick is laden with symbolism but particular emphasis is placed on the militant nature of Ahab's relationship with nature. Essentially he is at war with the sea and in terms of the biblical morality of the time reaps just reward. Richard Dawkins, a confirmed atheist, has recently suggested that altruism might be hard wired into human nature through our genes. Perhaps this altruism could extend beyond our extended family towards other species? Perhaps placing Leviathan, a 20m long drawing of a real monster of the deep in the deconsecrated space of an x-church might hint at notions of redemption ' a kind of secular atonement for the sins of our forefathers against nature. It is certainly my hope to redeem the image of the whale from the rainbow coloured Save the Whale t-shirts of the 70s and so many brightly coloured bath toys. Origin 09 is an ambitious, ongoing series of drawing projects that aims to explore our complex relationship with biology and with other members of the animal kingdom. Coinciding with the forthcoming bicentenary of Darwin's birth, strands of the project will include: Leviathan, a life sized drawing of a Sperm Whale to be installed in the x-church space in Lincolnshire; Orbit a drawing from a photograph of my retina and Transverse Process an 'evolving' series of drawings to be based on animal bones that will be developed in collaboration with the Bioarchaeology Department of the University of Cardiff.

# 2 [5 March 2009]

Now that the (graphite) dust has settled, I can enjoy this vantage point and survey the physical and emotional territory covered during the creation of Leviathan. Regarding the process of creating the drawing, I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable a task this was. Worries about the structural integrity of three conjoined sheets of paper, each measuring the height of an Olympic diving board were soon left behind as I became swallowed up (almost literally) by the task of laying down and erasing marks. Gridding up felt more like some form of archaeological survey. Or perhaps cartography. I'm reminded of Milton's analogy; how the whale seems like a 'like a promontory ' [or] ...moving land' a living landscape, here expressed through the medium of a full-scale map. There were several occasions when I got lost and had to recheck my co-ordinates, stumbling about in the white mist of a giant page. Curves derived from the original, gestural, preliminary drawing - derived from arcing movements of my arm - took on whole new forms and required a kind of shuffling concentration to connect one coordinate to another with the required degree of subtlety. Quite a task, but it has been amazingly encouraging to have received so much in the way of help and support from those involved in the project. Not least from Marcus and Hilary, x-church directors and trustees, who confidently and calmly dealt with the issues of managing the extraordinary expectations inevitably involved in running any kind of show in that amazing space. The central aisle is a very big volume of air to fill and any work of art runs the risk of not fully addressing its truly cavernous nature. If there was any anxiety that the drawing might fall short of this challenge then I saw no sign of it. Marcus and his technician Mark led the operation of hanging the whale with great aplomb ' which created a very interesting moment for me as the drawing took its dive in reverse and unfurled up towards the apex of the building. It was only at this point that its otherwise 'inchoate form' (to quote Herman Melville) became visible. When making the drawing on the ground it was only possible to see what amounted to garden pond-sized details from the drawing and it only the action of the imagination that ensured that the drawing meshed together as a coherent surface. Dan Sumption also deserves my thanks for creating a wonderful body of photographic documentation: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gulch/sets/7215761372.... Contextualising such a broad ranging body of work for Origin 09 has been an ongoing challenge and Human have helped by creating a wonderful website www.origin09.org to perform that function. I believe that this website, along with the wonderful readings from Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, Ted Hughes and Kathleen Jamie that Chris Jones and Matthew Clegg performed on the opening night of the exhibition have all helped provide the whale with some wonderfully deep and imaginative territory through which to swim.