My Little Box of Numbers - Counting, 2013

This little piece started by retrieving a couple of locks and their back plates from the fire; a wicker trunk to which they were attached had been burnt. Their patina, form and scale were sufficiently interesting for them to be put aside for a later day.

Using these transmuted locks together with semi-reflective film and solid reflective surfaces (such as appear in a number of my recent artworks), this combination of materials suggested the idea of a spectator looking into an enclosed area in which one could imagine being trapped. One can see the locks, the means by which one could be released, floating in the inaccessible distance. Thus a small wooden box was created; one side of which is a viewing window whilst the top surface, being a semi-opaque acrylic panel lets in light, illuminating the spaces beyond the locks themselves.

After trying various spatial and illusory combinations of these locks, their back-plates and reflections, the work did not fail to underwhelm - the enigmatically interior space needed something else in it.

Some years earlier, I had chanced upon an interesting mathematical progression using decimal counting numbers based on the power of ‘8’. Now was the time to work this into something. This numeric sequence’s pyramidic form seemed to fit well into this recently created, physical yet seemingly continuous space; from then on, this box was about numbers, yet again!

The two side panels were originally to be in low-chromatic keeping with the interior enclosed space; however, this was visually boring, so a composition based on numbers and especially the figure 8 came into being; the colour palette being worked up from the suggestions of colour in the two burnt locks. The finished article has become something of a mini ‘Wunderkammer’ and to me, it’s a ‘Little Box of Numbers’ containing a very elegant form of ‘Counting’.