Stephen Irving

My work exploits practice and form to create work that is not predetermined by its outcome, but rather through the process in which it is created. Destruction, abstraction and re-imagining drives this process and, as a result, the finished work can be seen more as a by-product of its production then the piece itself. I don’t believe that I create the work, rather that I assist with its own creation. A sound, a shape, a colour or a brush stroke — whether intentional or not — can dramatically alter the direction in which my work develops. It is this uncertainty, this chance encounter, that drives me and the work which I facilitate. Through this I aim to find the beauty within the discarded, draw attention to the unnoticed, and find creation though the destructed. I do not see any of my work as being pieces, but rather site-specific installations, with every piece not truly being complete until it is in place, and it is from there — with the interaction it makes within its environment — that it becomes complete. My love of the 60’s Fluxus art movement combined with a working class upbringing against an industrial backdrop are the two factors that most greatly influence and direct the work which I am currently making. “There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear.” John Cage

Orange Futures

Growing up a regular advert for the telephone company Orange would be permanently buried into my head - "The futures bright, the futures Orange". The piece is at its heart is a landscape of an urban metropolis, but approached with an intentional hap-hazardness that allows me to explore the scene through a more abstract viewpoint developing scenes through shapes and implications.