Diversion, City
1996, laser print, 19 x 13cm
Notes:
I'd been toying around with finding shapes in natural forms that could tesselate, especially looking at forest and cloud formations. Some of these experiments ended up in paintings (for example Under Canvas 8). This was facilitated by cutting dozens of different proportioned rectangles and hexagons out of paper, and moving these frames over photographs. At some point, out of curiosity, I tried it with the A-Z, and found a near perfect repeating hexagon, covering the City of London:
Simply photocopying and collaging the shape wouldn't form a seamless repeat, so I used Photoshop for the first time, enrolling on a computer graphics course at Tower Hamlets College run by Susan Morris. This was an excellent free facility used by many 'unemployed' artists at the time.
Making the street names flow into adjoining hexagons was the biggest challenge. After this I superimposed the original grid from page 62 and left a white margin on the right, as if the page had been torn out.
The print presents the financial heart of the City of London as an endlessly repeating pattern. This implies a completely hermetic, urbanised, capitalist globe, offering no way out and no way in.
Other alumni of the class of '96:
Denise Hawrysio
Jennet Thomas
Marc Hulson