Altered Map #1, 2018

Alongside the breaking down and reconstruction of the collage works, I have started to look differently at how I create maps. Whilst maps are always the projections of their makers, they are often didactic in nature – depicting infrastructure, cultures and artificial forms that have either grown out of, or have been constructed on to places. I have in the past made maps of real places such as London in this fashion – with place being the starting point from which semiotics evolve.

More recently I’ve been interested in the idea of maps that are breaking down and moving away from the relationship to the particular places that they depict. In today’s political climate this disintegration has a particular relevance.

Altered Map #1, 2018, is from a printed road map of the area containing my favorite English village name – Blubberhouses. I paint out much of the detail and lettering to create new place names. Many of the borderlines formed by the roads and other topographies are eliminated. This work eludes to the fluid and changing nature of geology itself and the etymology of place names.