Suminder Virk

My work draws on the domestic. The underlying practice looks at mundane everyday objects that are around us and turns them into art objects. This in turn blurs their functionality but also highlights their value.

I get the inspiration from fabrics and embroidery that stem from my Indian background. For as long as I can remember, the variety, inventiveness and richness of the textures and colours of Indian textiles of all kinds has fascinated me - I try to bring these qualities into my work.

For my installations I like to use objects that are invisible, hidden and unnoticeable –always part of other objects, but without having an independent existence of their own: springs inside a mattress, mirrors, decorative mouldings or dowels. I take these objects and aestheticise them by covering them in silk threads in an intricate fashion. My objective in making these installations out of mundane everyday objects is to give the viewer a dreamlike experience.

 Personal family photographs are also a source of inspiration. I like to transfer them on to canvas and then work threads or paint onto them. The photos remind me of those ordinary moments, which have now become special with the passage of time.

Steven King

Drawing acts as a means to translate a thought into a tangible idea. Through conversations with Steven, you immediately understand that he jumps from one idea to the next, and sometimes back again; it gets quite confusing. But in his drawing you instantly understand where the thought process is leading, and equally where it has been. It is refreshing; one feels he will always find new ways of communicating his ideas. 

Steven's drawings offer something from the classical traditions to the comical invention and much in between. The relationships of these sometimes disparate images are, to my mind, the response of the artist evaluating and re-evaluating both subjects from the particular to the universal, and the variety of mark-making with different media. There is almost a disciplined stubbornness to refuse that sometimes some things won't connect, and a willingness to exhibit each attempt, leaving the artist's enquiries for the viewer to see. 'Can I bring this to fruition another way?' 'If I add another character?' ' Change the perspective?' 'Does it look better at night?' 'Is this tree that tree?' Having worked with Steven, it is frustrating to see so many ideas abandoned in the creative process; sometimes potential is lost. But inspiration has never been Steven's weakness, and more often than not a new idea becomes the best way to demonstrate versatility. This is not to say that Steven's work is without underlined contexts; the aesthetic devices may subtlety echo the nature of contemporary life or the value of spontaneity, just as those clinical white spaces reference the modernist deliverance from detail.

This work is a document, organising a world as it evolves, and has a lateral association and a linear sense of progression. Steven has always expressed the importance of drawing in his practice, the age old - probably first - form of communication which offers an openness and freedom of approach. What I admire in this work is the honest and humble lack of finality, not in the individual pieces, but in a body of work that is constantly evolving, that answers some questions but asks more. This is the process of the artist at work, in which development is held in the highest regard.

I'm sure as a viewer you will find much of interest - please enjoy.

Brian Watkins - collaborator