My work is concerned with the uses, characteristics and poetics of space.
Places and artefacts have meanings; at the very least they present an invitation to experience sensations. Sometimes these inducements are intentional, sometimes they just happen. They also mutate, as events, objects and images impact upon each other. Viewed in this way, the spaces we experience become semiotic sounding boards, and the whole world becomes one giant sculpture with endless smaller sculptures within it.
In practical terms, this means I am mostly drawn to what people do, how they leave their mark on the spaces they inhabit; but I am also drawn to formal aspects, by which I mean the compositions that can be created from what might seem arbitrary until it is isolated by the pictorial frame, thus the work is often a collision of the abstract and the representational. Sometimes the attraction is the beauty in what might otherwise be disregarded, and sometimes it is just the essential weirdness of what we surround ourselves with and take for granted.
Media: painting, photography, 3D assemblage.
Career: exhibited professionally since 1991 inc. Germany, China and various UK cities. Work in private collections in UK, France, Germany and the USA, and in the public collection of Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council.
Author and retired fine art lecturer.
Training:
PhD Fine Art – Bretton Hall College, Leeds University
MA Art and Architecture – Kent Institute of Art and Design, Canterbury
BA (Hons) Fine Art – Exeter School of Art, University of Plymouth
Dip HE Manchester Metropolitan University
HND Photography – Southampton City College
Email: stephenriley8@nullhotmail.com
