Encounter

Group exhibition, Afterwards, Mead Gallery, Warwick

100 A2 graphite drawings taken from YouTube 12 meters x 2.5 meters

A hundred encounters with the wilful force of the tornado. The drawings, taken from films on YouTube, are at once intimate and distant, lending a sense of the commonplace to a force that is selective, fickle, and personal in its destruction.

Chasing a Tornado appeals to an overwhelming urge to get as close as possible to the awesome destructive power of a fickle force of nature and indeed to seem to bate it, to touch and encounter it. ‘Encounter’ plays with this magnetic draw to the unimaginable but very real power of the storms, our fascination with destruction, and the selective obliteration of the path of the tornado.

The images are taken from You Tube videos taken by ‘storm chasers’ in the USA. These, often shaky images, are taken in the heat of the moment, in pursuit of, or flight from the full force of the tornadoes. These frenetic moments have been transposed into a series of simple and calm drawings, drawn on thin leaves of paper that flutter as you pass. They are represented as ‘ encounters’ and seem as distant and incongruous as a sighting of a UFO.