Derek Boak
My work is concerned with how we as humans leave traces and marks on landscapes, each other and our dwellings. Initially my approach was to look for evidence of our involvement and interference with the landscape, collecting objects abandoned and changed by the elements. These objects became talismans of hope in the natural world, the hope that the passage of humans over time will remain despite continual organic change. The work can then encompass a new dimension by trying to create a consciousness of the place and time being studied. This idea of consciousness is then related back to the idea of the individual having a spiritual impact on other humans. I became interested in the burial mound and cairns, which hold the remains of humans, the western equivalent of the spirit houses seen in South American culture. I began to explore the double image, one pertaining to the body, and the other pertaining to the wraith, an apparition seen at the moment of death. Though physical world is left and the spiritual world obtained, through memories, artefacts that hold a history and the places that people once inhabited, that spirit remains. My aim is to create a sense of loss and abandonment but also to generate a hope for things to come. My work has been exhibited in the following; Chapel Gallery, Ormskirk Open Show annually 2002 - 2004; MAFA's Open Show four times in the last seven years; Liverpool, Rainford, and Edinburgh Fringe with Starving Wife Art Co., between 1998 and 2000; Drumcroon Open Show, annually 1998-2001; Merseyside Artists Five, 1989; St Helen?s Open Show, 1999 & 2004; Pilkington Gallery, Cork Street, London, 1999.