Fax-similes:Lost in Transcription

Facsimiles are a series of drawings of found objects worked on discarded fax paper which explore the liminal space that we call ‘lost’: a place between loser and finder, a territory charted only by the object establishing a distant connection between two unknown individuals.
This idea is approached through an appropriation of the technology of the fax: a long distance communication lacking direct contact between its users. This sense of the unseen informs the drawing process: worked in white ink on the white heat-sensitive fax paper, the drawing is invisible in the making, revealed only though a final exposure to heat; a blindness which resonates with the faxing process: the sender cannot see the output.
The images themselves appear as ghostly scans, built up through an intensive scrutiny which results in an obsessive scrawling mark like an indecipherable handwriting, suggesting a sense of intimacy through this somewhat futile attempt to uncover hidden narratives. The drawings begin to appear more like treasured letters, rather than the impersonal output of the fax as the intensity of the working process leaves the careworn traces of human handling.
In this way, the ‘drawn’ mark does not replicate that of the machine, but more situates itself inside the framework of technology and appropriates its means for its own ends.