The Panoptic series
Artist's book, ceramics and prints.
Dimensions variable, 201 5.
Panopticon; is the name given to an architectural structure dependent on the concept of surveillance. The gaze may be how power is exercised, yet it is the principle in which it automates itself and dis-individualises power that the mechanism actuates. Cylindrical in structure, cells are arranged around a central watchtower where the viewer may oversee without ever being seen doing so. This would have the effect of making prisoners/individuals feel like they are permanently under observation, even if every individual cell is not being watched at all times. Observation and control are two of the simplest devices in which the panoptic diagram is implemented, making the panopticon polyvalent in its many possible applications.
By removing the gaze through the process of blind drawing, control of the viewed or control of the artwork is removed, reconfiguring the power that resides in the once panoptic architectural structures of prisons, watchtowers, satellites and surveillance objects and displacing their exactitude.
We see most of the modern world through some form of ‘ocular apparatus’, not dissimilar, ‘Art is designed to be looked at and observed, akin to modern society. It seems fitting that one should question that relationship through the process of making, especially regarding the current climate of technology’.