Figure Study in Light by Paul Holmes

I’ve always been fascinated by suits and tailoring.  Skilled cutting of cloth can flatter the form and make an imperfect body seem well-proportioned.  A good suit lends its wearer confidence and dignity, power even.  The suit had its origins just over a hundred years ago in sporting fashion and the connection to the athletic ideal hasn’t entirely been lost.

I’m also interested in the way in which we are identified by others – often the state or large corporations – as unique individuals.  These identities are articulated and stored by these institutions in various forms – photographs and fingerprints, for instance, as well as facts about us, such as body weight, shape, and size: our vital statistics.

It is similar measurements that a tailor uses to create a suit of clothes, and it is these figures that I have converted into lengths of glowing LED tubing.   This seemed to me an intriguing basis to create some kind of schematic evocation of the human figure, akin to a child’s line-drawing or graphic signage.  In this form the body seems almost skeletal – quite unlike the enhanced figure created by the tailoring itself.

My work is preoccupied with our bodies: Their actions and gestures, their impact on the world, and their gradual deterioration over time.  Often this is through video art, installed on large CRT monitors that make the spectator engage with the work sculpturally by moving around it in space.