Mike Dodd, MA Fine Art

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Graduated from University of Wales Institute, Cardiff

Selected by Simon Fenoulhet

00.58’50”- 00.59’10”, BST. 21.06.2008. 51°483105N, 003°164944W

Artist statement

Following a career in commercial illustration (mainly children's picture books and educational work) and a move to southern France, I decided to realise an earlier intention of mine to pursue an interest in fine art by studying for an MA at UWIC in Cardiff. In the course of a year's full-time study, I became interested in following a process or fixed set of rules of my own devising in order to generate work. I investigated the obscuring and revealing of photographic imagery with both coloured stick-on dots and screens perforated with circular holes of varying sizes. In a piece executed immediately prior to my work for the final show, I also utilised the strategy of re-representing photographic imagery through drawing.

The idea for my final show piece was generated by the view from the two picture windows of my allocated space on the fifth floor of Cardiff School of Art. I wanted to inscribe this view on the internal wall of the institution, thus making the institution the 'frame' for the work and imposing a necessary transience on the piece: it would have to be painted out at the end of the show, in accordance with the rules of the institution. I took two photographs through the lower sections of the windows over the moment of the summer solstice which were simultaneous exposures of 20 seconds. I digitally reversed these images in order to acquire 'mirror-images' of the views and printed them at A1 size. By a process of 'squaring-up', I transferred these night-time mirror-images onto the back wall of my space. I drew them in pastels, pastel pencils and softcolour crayons on panels of mid-brown emulsion paint located exactly opposite the areas of window through which the images were shot and using exactly the same overall dimensions as these sections of window.

I spent six weeks inscribing these images onto the wall. At the end of the MA final show, I painted out both images with white emulsion paint and shot a video of the process. The painting out took approximately 20 minutes.

One of the most important lessons I learnt over the course of the MA year, and especially in relation to my final piece, was that I can use the skills I acquired during my career as an illustrator in the service of an interesting concept in order to produce work which engages the widest possible audience.

Selector text

I was attracted to Mike Dodd's drawings in spite of myself. There's a perverseness about his process, a strict adherence to a set of rules and the knowledge that the work cannot be removed but will ultimately be obliterated. Maybe that's why I liked it.

The college overlooks the city from a fifth floor window and Dodd worked directly with the view, accurately documenting the summer solstice from two adjacent windows on two still cameras. He then worked from large prints to recreate those images by drawing directly onto the studio walls. That much is straightforward but a number of things elevate this work above the norm. One is the fact that the work is part of the wall's surface, an extravagant gesture given the fact that it will have to be painted out in a matter of days. The absence of any frame or special surface behind the work gives the impression that the images have been burned into the wall. That and the fact that the images have been reversed.

Another key decision was to place two images side by side directly behind the view through the windows. The repetition reveals degrees of similarity and difference as the superficial appearance is that you see the same image twice but closer inspection reveals that the slight shift in angle makes the views very different.

I went back to the college for the closing act when Dodd painted out the work on his last day in the building. Characteristically, he'd arranged for that final part of the process to be captured on video. (Simon Fenoulhet, 2008)