Much as Brancusi saw architecture as inhabited
sculpture[1], the
current body of work by Roger Crawford transcribes art as architecture in all
aspects of form except functional inhabitation. Disjointed sections depicting
foundation, interior, exterior, angle, surface and structure, coexist in such a
way as to present a multiplicity of the three-dimensional construct’s facets
simultaneously. The proposition of reconfigured form for simultaneous frontal
aspect (explored through the Analytical Cubism of George Braques) continues
through Crawford’s exploration of the exploded physical object’s spatial
incongruity and relocation in space. Visually deconstructing architecture to
partially glimpsed portions, Crawford emphatically is reducing the solidity of
construction to immateriality, whereby bricks, cladding, glass, steel, concrete
and veneer are reduced to line and form, contingent on the strength of negative
space.
Crawford’s palette of mission brown augmented with
neutrals and red furthers the argument for a Braque reference; however, this is
more intimately aligned to Crawford’s relationship and ongoing exploration of
architecture and particularly, the experience of a youth spent in a home
commissioned designed by Kevin Pethebridge. It is also the palette of the mid century era as
a whole, and as such presents an idyll of domestic modernism. And, while the
palette may be grounded in memories past, the physicality of the work is
aligned to the contemporary cityscape of glass-clad edifices that reflect and
jumble their neighbours’ facades, an experience provided by any view down any
city canyon. “The sculptures come from my observation of a world constructed
through fragmentation,” says Crawford.
Fragmentation is in itself the act of
deconstruction rather than creation, yet within Crawford’s latest exhibition
the descriptor is far more than a clever piece of contrary verbiage. The larger
sculptures, for example, when viewed frontally, present an exterior
construction of fragments arranged for that aspect, yet when viewed from below,
the experience is quite different. From this aspect, the materials multiply and
refract exponentially, as surface, angle, depth and void jostle with the rhythm
of negative spaces dancing through the interior/exterior volume. The space is
further exploited by mirrored facing surfaces. This device, by enabling the
proliferation of internal complexity, builds the fragmentation of space into a
visual whole, far exceeding exterior dimension. Effectively, Crawford’s work is
exploring the phenomenon of spatial illusion by denying and supporting physical
materiality simultaneously, and melding primary solidity with the illusory
reflection.
The small, flat-constructed pieces further
Crawford’s engagement with the material of the ‘everyday’ to critically inform
the work. In these, while the three-dimensionality is minimal, the figure and
ground are displaced as object and wall by an intermediate layer that fits
neither, and both, points in space. The physicality of the work further
suggests the architectural, with overviews not dissimilar to floor-plans, and
textures akin to rough and smooth concretes. They also evoke the works’ concern
with mid-century domestic treatments such as timber veneer and aluminium
cladding. And while many are in the neutrals of exterior claddings the colour
combinations chosen by Crawford for a select few recall the zany interior
design hey-days of his youth through pairings such as avocado with sunset
orange and the unforgettable fuchsia and mission brown.
This fondness for architectural treatment finds a
further realization in the small, predominantly neutral, wall-mounted works.
Arranged to facilitate a dialogue between the pieces, each is positioned so
that the initial views are confined to a frontal aspect. The work’s spatial
location skews a flat reading. In effect, the viewer is forced to acknowledge
planar shifts that crimp perspective, in that they position facets as
concurrently forward and receding. The earlier mentioned flat-constructed
pieces, effectively, are diminished dimensional renderings of these works as
viewed from the extreme front.
The paintings’ visual instability completes the
evolution towards solidity through the multiplicity of fragmentation. Each
brushstroke presents a single fragment, which in layers of shifting tone within
a single colour become a field of self-perpetuating repetition that denies
focus, as depth of field shifts perpetually back to the surface. Physically the
work engages architecture as the domestic scrims of Victorian Era Australia,
which multiplied the architectural domestic space through division. The
repeated motif echoes the rhythmic movement of negative space within the
sculptural works, while Repetition Phenomena exhibits here as the accidental
spirals that catch the eye’s passage across the uneasy surface. Taking this
idea back to the Analytic Cubism of Braque where an object’s angles are viewed
simultaneously, in this work, the city is viewed from all angles
simultaneously. The fragments of façade, interior, roof and infrastructure are
divided to equally important parts to be viewed as a whole and as one. An
idyllic narrative can also be wrested from the glittering surface of the sea,
over which Crawford looked from his
childhood home. And while these patterns and suggestions exist as influences on
Crawford’s imagination, fundamentally, the work is about the material, be that
paint or the materials of architecture.
"Architecture is the triumph of human
imagination over materials, methods and men, to put man into possession of his
own earth. It is at least the geometric pattern of things, of life, of the
human and social world. It is at best that magic framework of reality that we
sometimes touch upon when we use the word order."
Frank Lloyd
Wright.[2]
Crawford’s
latest body of work dallies with our concepts of architecture, from the grand
designs to the simplicity of shelter. It also touches on the perfection of
maths through the polygon/re-entrant angle relationship, which the large mirror
work resolves beautifully. Most importantly, it is a melding of the formal and
emotional elements of architecture and it is here that Wright’s quote fits the
Crawford dialogue between man and structure as a “magic framework of reality”
touched upon as “order.”