Junction and the origin of Park Row Drawing

I found time today to take photos of the Junction project. It was important to me to get a photograph from the ‘point’ which shows the correct perspective. There are a number of aspects of this box (as with much of my work) which are not always obvious.
Park Row Drawing continues my interest in the idea that decorative surface pattern is a denial of surface. Clearly, the history of painting deals with the same issue; how to reconcile the illusory space of an image with the surface upon which it exists. Decoration though, is somehow more insidious; in that the discourse of  decoration explores this issue without ever making it an apparent ‘problem’ as much of 20th century painting did. Nearly all surface pattern uses illusion to create the idea that the surface of the object being decorated doesn’t exist. Interlacing for example within Islamic pattern has a deep significance.

These two photographs show the source of my inspiration for Park Row Drawing, two pieces of furniture from the collection at Temple Newsam House.

What I aimed to do with Park Row Drawing, on the one hand, was simply to ‘decorate’ the junction box. On the other, it was to use this logic of decoration to completely deny the surface (and function) of the box, by redrawing the interlaced and looping curved block design from this 17th century wooden chest, in a way which allowed it to occupy the entire (illusory) interior space. To complete the illusion of location, the drawing is geolocated, in that the shadows are correct to the exact location of the box at a particular time. On the 27th June, the time that the shadows are correct is 4.10pm. By the 27th July, this will have changed to 4.25pm due to the changing angle of the sun. This clearly gives a temporality to what is a static image.

That there is a specific point to see the box is hinted at by the raked look of the interior ‘floor’ if you stand further away from the box. The photo above compensates as it is taken from the ‘correct’ perspective point.

So, location, viewer, time, meaning, museums as a source; I guess these are the tropes I consider with this work.