Archive / Rhizomes

Make Mine a Molotov

Mixed media on canvas boards and moving-image work
2005 · Hive Gallery, Barnsley

Make Mine a Molotov marks an important transition in my practice. Earlier works had explored repetition through painting, using transferred media images to question the cyclical nature of history, politics and everyday life. Here those repeated images break apart into an installation of modular canvas panels that can be endlessly reconfigured.

The work no longer exists as a single fixed composition, but as an open field whose meaning shifts with each new arrangement. Iconoclastic, political and everyday images collide across the panels, creating a structure that is closer to a field of events than a single image.

Every panel was made using image transfer rather than direct painting. The transfer process leaves its own material history: softened edges, seams, losses and traces that become part of the image itself. These imperfections were not simply accepted; they became integral to the work.

The title reflects the paradox that runs throughout the work. It recognises both the seductive rhetoric of revolution and the destructive certainty of power. Neither authority nor resistance is presented as innocent. Instead the work reflects on the recurring cycles through which history appears to replay its conflicts, ideologies and aspirations.

Make Mine a Molotov was first exhibited in 2005 at Hive Gallery, Barnsley, where Lesley Guy wrote the accompanying critical essay.

Film

After completing the installation, I scanned the individual panels and used them as frames for a short animation. Rather than simply documenting the installation, the film extends it. The paintings become the film stock.

The transferred surfaces produce a worn, flickering quality reminiscent of early cinema. Scratches, seams, softened edges and slight misregistrations move through the animation, carrying the memory of the image-transfer process into time.

Make Mine a Molotov
Artist-made animation using scanned panels from the installation.