Dillan Marsh

Bristol, United Kingdom
Residency: May-June 2008

Artist Statement
My work is involved with the processes of trying to realize potential or fantasy. Inevitably it does not reach a ‘satisfactory’ conclusion; it can be flawed or functionless, but always aspiring to be something more. I am interested in the shift of focus away from a resolved ‘product’, to a situation where systems and strategies take precedence. I work with a range of approaches from the hobbyist to the over enthusiastic mathematical product designer.

I approach my projects as a way of testing myself, a game. The studio is set up as a stage, the unrealizable nature of the idea, my making dilemma and aspiration becoming the spectacle. I aim to explore the themes of aspiration and unattainable ideals within my practice. The concept of stage and spectacle relates to this in terms of creating an illusion or other world. It all becomes about putting on ‘The Show’.

About Dillan Marsh
I am currently based in Bristol, UK, where I graduated in 2002 from the University of the West of England. Since 2005 I have been training in bookbinding, specializing in the hand finishing of conserved books and fine bindings. The process of attempting to realize or deliver the unrealizable forms the focus of my current work. I think this is relevant because everyone on some level tries or tried to do just that, with varying degrees of failure.

Project Description

The fantasy of flight is a form of escapism.

A collection of shopping bags and scrap plastic taped together, powered by a domestic fan. As in the myth of Icarus, there is the risk that in its realization, the fantasy may become a failure. To assemble these materials, the debris of everyday life, foreshadows the inevitable return to the ground.