Gareth Bell-Jones

The works are the product of drawing with sculpture, predominately through cutting paper. My main concerns are with the ambiguity of and imposition of meaning. Much of my work is highly intricate cut paper, creating drawings through a reductive approach to the material. Using generic, improvised and specific patterns and imagery I allow the viewer to draw together diverse associations. Whilst one work may be an accurate form of mapping or tracing, others only contain the appearance of such. The circle is a recurrent theme in my work, both imposing meaning and signifying nothing. The removal of reference allows only the appearance of meaning. The theme is continued in my series on globsters. The term refers to the enormous unidentified organic masses that occasionally wash up on coastlines, often adopted into folklore as sea-monsters. The cut shapes hold the appearance of a specific reference yet contain none. With Dunk Island Beast the pattern is repeated three times acting as depiction and replication, as such moving from unclear to accurate reproduction. Their indistinct form is contrasted against the purity of the three shapes and reflected colours.