Archive / Repetitions

Porpoise

Porpoise — a dolphin-like marine mammal, or, in a New York accent, “purpose.”

On 11 September 2001 I was in my studio rubbing the paper away from an image transfer of the New York skyline for a painting called City Slickers. Suddenly there was a frantic knock at the door. It was Polly, one of the tenants upstairs.

“Richard! Richard! Turn on the radio!”

I switched it on just as the second plane flew into the World Trade Center.

Looking back at the painting, with the Twin Towers half-covered by wetted paper being rubbed away, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. It was an uncanny moment.

Like everyone else, I watched in disbelief. It was a tragedy beyond comprehension. Yet I was already making work that questioned the values of global finance and the environmental cost of endless economic growth. My thoughts turned not towards revenge or politics, but towards nature itself. How would nature respond?

Pinned to my studio wall was a photograph of a dolphin that I loved. Its open mouth almost looked like laughter — that unmistakable dolphin grin. I collaged it into the skyline, repeated it across the composition and made a digital print.

I wasn't laughing at the events of the day. I was angry, shocked and deeply saddened. The dolphins represented something entirely different: the indifference of nature to human ambition. Whatever we build, whatever we destroy, nature simply continues to be itself.

I emailed the digital image to Gordon Campbell Gray and a few close friends. Gordon replied almost immediately, “Can I buy that?” I answered, “Yes… but I'll have to make it first.”

Producing the paintings proved far more demanding than making the digital collage. Image transfer is a layered process. A first transfer establishes the registration, a second painted layer restores the whites lost when the paper is removed, and a final transfer restores the richness and depth of colour. The dolphins were so large that each required five carefully aligned tiled sections, all transferred as reversed mirror images. The process was so complex that, rather than stop after one painting, I decided to make a second version: a mirror image of the first.

Both paintings were sold — one to Gordon Campbell Gray and the other to Claire Turner of Comme Ca Art.

The original digital print was later exhibited in Reactions in New York and was subsequently acquired by the Library of Congress.