Ian Marley

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Ian Marley is a Senior Lecturer and chair of the Graphic design subject group in the school of Communication studies at North-West University. He obtained the following qualifications at the Vaal University of Technology N. Dip Fine Art, NH. Dip Fine Art and a M. Tech Degree Fine Art. He is also a practicing artist and has had several solo exhibitions and has taken part in-group exhibitions both nationally and internationally.

PROJECT

Title fin.
Medium Paper, perspex and cotton
Dimensions 17 cm x 221 cm
Edition Unique
Price R 10, 000

This book entitled “fin.” consists of 14 laser-engraved landscape fragments incased in perspex and stitched together to form transparent pages. This laser technology literary burns and engraves images of the landscape until only fragments of the delicate cotton Fabriano paper remain. These burnt fragments are layered between perspex as if remnants of a historically significant archival document.

Conceptually the book is characterised by a fascination with the landscape as a fragile and malleable construct in the hands of man. The work depicts the landscape as overworked, processed, exhausted, mined and exploited by human activities, a landscape toyed with until its scars assume the nature of traces of human aggression. The process of bruising transforms and mutates the landscape so that it is silenced and the wasteland of destruction remains. As one pages thought the book one moves deeper and deeper into the landscape of destruction until only silence and emptiness are left.