1 square Meter Of Sky... 1m x 1m inkjet print.
1 square Meter Of Sky... 1m x 1m inkjet print.
This photographic work was commissioned for the group exhibition Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City, curated by Gordon Dalton for CBAT in 2004. At this time I was living in Cardiff/Caerdydd in the period following my involvement with Wales at the Venice Biennale in 2003. Cardiff Bay was still in the throes of being 'regenerated,' with private housing developments being constructed in the former-docklands, gradually displacing the communities that had established themselves there over generations. Having recently been on the sharp-end of this process in central London – having had to abandom my home and studio there, once rents increased beyond my reach – I was sensitive to the ways in which artists were (and still are) implicated in the process of 'regneration' – that is, as property speculation and a way to gain land tenure. On receiving this commission, I set about devising a way to frustrate what I considered to be the inevitable consequence of the exhibition, and "sell" the commissioners a square metre of sky above one of the empty plots in Cardiff Bay which would soon be developed; further to this, I would also withhold the location from which the photograph was taken. The 1m x 1m inkjet print was mounted on foan board and installed in the CBAT gallery for the duration of the exhibition.