‘Out on the Wye’. Considering the shoreline of the Wye from a drifting rowing boat. Drawings (four images).
‘Out on the Wye’
These drawings use Marcel Duchamp’s experiments with chance when in 1913 he dropped a taught line of thread onto the floor where it formed a relaxed and twisted version of itself. Duchamp made three wooden patterns, from these patterns, calling them ‘3 Standard Stoppages’.
My drawings are of the foreshore of the Wye as seen from a small, drifting rowing boat. I scanned with my eyes working in a vertical axis while the boat moved on the tide. Discrepancies occurred between the vertical line that my eyes intended and the crayons elastic movement horizontally away from the vertical, before looping back to the vertical again.
The accidental imprint of the sole of my boot on one of these drawings provided the solution for the work’s completion. By linking up the drawings into one array, again through the formula of Duchamp’s standard stoppages and drawn in the same murky brown as the muddy river Wye, I created a shifting middle ground uniting the separate drawings.