siemon allen

THE BIRDS
BANK Gallery, Durban, South Africa, 2008

The Birds is the most recent in a series of woven works. Constructed with recycled strands of 16mm film from a rare original copy of Hitchcock's "The Birds" (1962). At four metres long by two meteres high it is also one of my largest 16mm woven contructions to date. The piece was constructed earlier this year for a group exhibition—Light Show—at the new BANK Gallery in Durban.

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JULIE MEHRETU — CITY SITINGS
Catalogue Essay, 2007

Destruction/Construction, Unquiet Community, Sublime Landscape
catalogue essay by Siemon Allen
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI, USA
2007

MAKEBA!
In process, 2006 - 2008

Makeba! is the third collection project in the series Imaging South Africa. This project, which is currently in process, includes over 400 individually collected audio recordings and artifacts by the South African singer and anti-apartheid activist, Miriam Makeba. These include 78 rpm discs, vinyl records, singles, 4-track reel-to-reel tapes, 8-track cartridges, cassette tapes, compact discs, an iPod, and a number of other rare items.

The project chronologically maps not anly an artist's prolific career, but documents how the material products of that career became a vehicle for the anti-apartheid message—through the music industry's mass-production and worldwide distribution. In addition to tracing a history of recorded sound through the technological shifts in its medium over a 50 year period, the chronology also reveals much about the marketing strategies within the development of the "world music" moniker.

The project re-addresses this "world music" phenomenon in the face of globalisation through its very accumulation process—via ecommerce and global networks such as eBay.

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ONE MILLION AND FORTY-FOUR YEARS (AND SIXTY THREE DAYS)
Catalogue Essay, 2007

A Companion To The Exhibition: Gimberg / Nerf / Sacks / Young
Kathryn Smith (ed)
Retrospectives
catalogue essay by Siemon Allen
SMAC Gallery, Stellenbosch, South Africa
2007

QUEEN

In process, 2007

Queen is a side project conceived primarily to keep my mind off of the epic Makeba! project. Basically it involves the soaking of thousands of Machin stamps (British Queen's head stamps named after the sculptor who designed it.) These were all amassed while living in South Africa and begun initially when my grandmother would tear them off of letters at her work place at the Durban Corporation and bring them home to me. There is no particular value in the stamps, but through time they have been printed in 32 dynamic colours.

My interest in the project lies in the fact that each stamp represents a single communication between the United Kingdom and South Africa. Although still in process, it is my aim to present not only the thousands of stamps in numerical order, but also the individual torn off pieces of the envelope.

CURIOUS
Graduate Seminar Publication, 2007

Kendall Buster & Siemon Allen (eds)
Department of Sculpture & Extended Media
VCU ARTS, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA

Curious is a project undertaken by students in the Spring 2007 Graduate Seminar in the Department of Sculpture and Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. The twelve artists represented in this book were each asked to produce from two to six pages that reflected self-directed personal research and, more importantly, operated in an oblique relationship to a studio practice focused primarily on object making. From internet sampling to collage of antique books, from scanned archival material and collected artifacts to sketches and watercolors, from brief private actions to elaborately staged scenes, the result is a window into each of these artist’s creative process. Evidence that behind the curious object is a curious mind.

Taylor Baldwin, Sami Ben Larbi, Nathan Carder, Lily Cox-Richard, Christina Fisher, David Grainger, Eli Kessler, AJ Liberto, Rosemarie Padovano, Jesse Robinson, James Sham, Matthew Spahr

DAILY CONSTITUTIONAL
Image Essay, 2007

John Blatter & Derek Cote´ (eds)
Time, image essay by Siemon Allen
Issue 4 Summer 2007, Richmond, VA, USA , 2007

The fourth issue of the Daily Constitutional, "a publication for the artist's voice", features the Time collection project outlined in the Artifacts section below.

ARTIFACTS

In process, 2007

This year I have also expanded the artifacts series with a number of additional associative collection pieces. These simple gestures attempt to address complex issues through the examination of various commercial design strategies employed to deliver information.

Time riffs off of the earlier Magazine (2003) piece, this time utilising all the actual Time magazines issued with a crossed out enemy. Retaining the same black, white and red design the Bin Laden edition is also included but without the X. The project developed out of my inititial interest in the simple gesture of the crossed out Japanese sun. This magazine cover, when compared with all other previous editions, is significantly minimal and modern—an appropriate design guesture for the first week after the dropping of the atomic bomb.

Time can be seen in the 3rd edition of the publication: The Daily Constitutional.

In America consits of two copies of the same Tintin comic—one in English and the other in Arabic.

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