Artists Statement

Artist’s Statement for Canberra Exhibition, 2010

The work of Keven Francis investigates transition as a visual and emotional state, a dimension of change. He crosses boundaries in his use of mediums and he invites the viewer to engage with the materials and their intrinsic meaning.Ceramics, paintings and drawings are on display and each informs the other. The engagement with process forms an integral and creative imperative to the work. Paint, clay and charcoal are hand burnished, smoothed or rubbed to relay a tactility and sensuality. The engagement with materials is intense as the artist’s hand melds with the materials as the process informs his work.

The ceramics have been through a hand molding and burnishing process. Carbon is infused into the bodies then burnt out to reveal a sharp separation, between dark and light that reveals the traces of the pit firing. Installed on elevated glass the pieces exist between floating and falling. The implied suspension and the intense carbon marks sliced into the small pots engage the viewer in a contemplation of the metamorphosis of materials. Straight lines are embedded on curved and flat surfaces with layers sliced through to reveal a threshold opening unstable and ambiguous spaces.

The process of pit firing the ceramics evolved into an exploration of scorching paper with materials from the pit, creating indexical marks and continuing the exploration of transitions. Both the pots and the paper have shifted into another state through the effects of heat. This process is kept open for inspection and contemplation.

Francis’ paintings have grown from these investigations with clay and fire. Layers of paint are built up and cut back in a cyclic process until the final layers are sliced and opened into an unstable meditative space. The works are not restricted by format or material and are presented as multiples and individuals, in square and rectangular shapes. The movement in the works consists of often hard lines bordering broader spaces where transition is expressed in both the edge of change and the expanded field.

The condition of transition shifts from the edge of the canvas that collapses into the wall to the dark painted cut that appears to dissect the canvas but on closer inspection is painted on the multi layered surface. At other times the dissection is real as one canvas lies directly next to another, conceptually linked but physically separate.

The artist asks the viewer to contemplate these zones and consider the possibility of tranquility within the dynamic condition of transition.