<> STATEMENT FOR "NEW HORIZONS" CATALOGUE The work for the exhibition "NEW HORIZONS" has been produced over the last two years, however, the theme of hands has been of visual and conceptual interest to me for many years. The particular placement of hand positions was used in earlier work such as the water-colour Surfacing (1989) and the wood-engraving triptych Frustration (1990). The personal expression evident in hand gestures, and the juxtaposition of these, has been a focus for the development of this body of work. Apart from using more figurative work than in previous exhibitions, this work concentrates on the archival, which is the processes of drawing, printmaking and painting using traditional materials. It has been important for me to develop ideas across various media in this exhibition and previous work. For example, the use of varying scale and the choice of colour or monochrome, are used as artist's tools to investigate a theme. Alternatively, my recent environmental or public art is now made from photographed objects for installation pieces in glass bricks. These works were developed from ephemeral installation in contemporary art spaces. That is the work was encouraged to disintegrate during and after the exhibition and documented as a process of disintegration. For me as a visual artist there is an urgent and immediate image that communicates a theme and a reflective or meditative process of intellectualisation that is about concept. It is my intention that this process leads to an investigation of underlying meaning, not always spelt out. The questions that I intend to raise in the artwork about why a certain number of people are grouped together and what their hands are doing, have personal intentions for me as an artist. The audience's reading of those images brings new personal interpretations and assists an ambiguous nature that is there in the first instance.