Ed Cross

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Cont@ct

LAMU
SHOW
2005 / 6

Through my work I strive to create a space for myself and for the viewer. This space is created by ambiguity about the layered origins of a piece and my intentions for it, and by the interplay between the object and the viewers imaginative associations with it. I like paradoxes – I mostly dislike conceptual art.

I generally use found-materials as the starting point for my wooden sculpture, most of which is derived from fragments of dugout canoes (known in Kiswahili as “wadau”). I find these on the beaches near where I live on the Kenyan coast - a place where traditional African spirituality, though in competition with Christianity and Islam, is still very powerful. Most traditional African art is produced for ritual and is imbued with spiritual significance by the artist and the community. The fishing boats that are carved here are not seen as “art” and don't normally have specific spiritual significance to the indigenous coastal people. In my work I am inspired by the (mostly hidden) presence around me of the traditional spirituality whose cathedrals are sacred forests (Kayas) and whose shrines are made from found materials.

My work, I believe, is an attempt to create a space in our global consciousness to wonder, the unfathomable, the indefinable, and the unselfconscious which to me is the most precious. These canoes that have been second homes to fishermen for years – re-shaped by the subtle action of the sea, colonised by Toledo beetles and eaten by termites have a significance beyond modern man's liking for weathered driftwood. To me they are more than just the remains of boats, they represent the remnant of an entire organic culture that is facing annihilation by modernity.

Mombasa 2005