Greg Daville - artist and curator

project funding 2005

As a practising artist whose work is idea led, 'Urbicide' was one of the first projects I undertook that was purely photographically based. I took the photographs and then digitally manipulated them. The grant I received from Juliet Gomperts enabled me to print this new series to a professional standard. Prior to this I had little experience of the logistical and financial demands of undertaking such an project.

As a result of being given the award I was able to to present an exhibition that realised the work on a scale and quality that I had only dreamed of before: the work is highly detailed and printed to A0 scale. The exhibition was a great success, and the long term effect is that I have become aware of the importance of the equipment I use, as well as the role of the printers who execute the final pieces. I am now much more informed and confident in the entire creative process my work goes through before it is hung.

The Gomperts grant has been a huge help both educationally as well as creatively.

Urbicide

'Uncommunication', psychological breakdown, architecture as metaphor, and 'collapse as a state of resolution' are themes that I have tried to address in previous projects. 'Urbicide' utilises architecture to express the above in a more literal way. In this project, buildings are photographed, and then structurally altered by digital manipulation. The original photographs provide the raw material for their own re-structuring. I hope to imbue these seemingly mundane structures with a suggestion of sentience or presence which might reflect the psyche of the (unseen) inhabitants.

A number of different things have influenced this work:

1. The phenomenon of 'Parkour' or 'Free-running'; an urban 'sport' where groups of athletic youth leap from one building to another.
2. The resonance this has with the Situationist's idea of 'La Derive', or the conscious drifting through the City as an activity in its own right.
3. Small conurbations, (and specifically for the origins of this project), Saltdean, a coastal town in the South East. It is a swamp of bungalows, which I am drawn to and at the same time am repulsed by. It is made up from one-storey habitats that seem so 'reduced' and mass-produced that, (to me), they exclaim 'box', rather than 'home'.

The box/domicile can be seen as the antithesis of the spirit of Parkour. The house as container, or prison. One could extrapolate this architectural notion as a model of the psyche; the unconscious hidden behind the facade we present to the world. I have since begun photographing larger buildings, referencing Regency and Modernist architecture. History as virus. Listening only to 'Einsturzende Neubauten' whilst making these pieces of work aided the quiet, brooding paranoia these buildings suggested to me.

www.gregdaville.com