“I see a clinic full of cynics
Who want to twist the peoples' wrist
They're watching every move we make
We're all included on their list.”

 

Golding / Staples / Hall, 1982

 

We live through some very ugly and troublesome times. With rebellion still being my deepest fascination, the contradiction between a man’s desire to find meaning in life and the universe itself, which is just meaningless and hostile, this contradiction opens up my exploration of absurdism.

 

The absurdity of life itself is a repeatedly common response to my conversations with masculinity, my conversations with men, my conversations with the pointlessness of life. I see and accept the fragility of men, failures and ruptures masked by our masculinity.

 

The only way to live, is to confront the absurd, not run from it, not hide from it, nor try to get around it, nor justify it, just acknowledge it and keep living - as an act of rebellion.

 

By creating art, it becomes the greatest example of rebellion, taking a little piece of the world and holding it up and finding pleasure in it.

 

This irrepressible curiosity, decades long intensive proprietary research and continual engagement with the nuances and its aesthetic potential; my visual language is characterised by a close observation that opens up a deeply humane approach to our surroundings. Familiarity and empathy; friendship, community and closeness.

 

There is one but truly serious problem when facing, challenging, or questioning masculinity, and that is the absurdity of living. Life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. If asked how to judge that whether this question is more urgent than others, I reply that one judges by the actions it entails.

 

Firmly on the shirt tails of Samuel Beckett, this conversation with masculinities explores the absurd, the absence, the silence and each little death with each photograph made.

 

This project is at the very beginning of finding quietism, harmony and slowly moving away from stills photography and embracing photo poetry, film, prose, performance, and sculpture. Learning what to remove and what to leave in. Embracing dissonance and rebellion, living as much a beautiful life one can amongst the insults.