I was an Angry Working Class Man, 2001

The figure on the top of the lid is a Pit-bull Terrier that has been kicked in the balls.  A symbol of aggressive masculinity, defeated.  The style of the overall decoration has echoes of genteel Chinoiserie, a style synonymous with refined with-drawing rooms.  This contrasts with the blokeish content of the gold prints.

Dolls at Dungeness, September, 11th 2001

Immediately after the attack on the twin towers, the media seemed to be full of reports of prejudice and anger from all sides.  In this pot the toys are just as much the bigots and aggressors as the war planes flying overhead, both are inanimate objects on to which we project our feelings.  My father helped to build Dungeness Nuclear Power Station.

We've found the Body of your Child, 2000

The two starting points for this work were Breugel's Hunters in the Snow and the song, Georgia Lee by Tom Waits which is about a parent singing about his murdered child.  I wanted the vase to be ambiguous.  I assume most people reading the title will think of paedophiles but over ninety per cent of all child murders are committed by the parents.

Vase using my Family (1998)

This is a transcription of an Arabic pot, it features images of my family both real and metaphorical. Its a kind of positive and loving pot about people I feel unconditional affection for. It is quite innocent compared to a lot of my other pots. It also features my teddy bear, Alan Measles, who was very much my surrogate father figure when I was growing up. His ear got burnt off by a gas fire and a neighbour knitted him a new one out of yellow wool. He never lost a motor race.

Its about 60 cms high

Private Collection

Anger Work, 2000

I was very angry when an exhibition was postponed because the Gallery was vandalised. 

Gimmicks (1996)

Here is listed a series of artists' gimmicks. E.g. Jackson Pollock - drips, Alexander Calder - mobiles, Richard Long - Walking, Van Gogh - One ear, etc. These are how we best remember the artists. They are useful marketing tools.

40 cms (Private Collection)

Vase in the style of Meaning (1998)

This is a transcription of an early Japanese pot. The incised contour lines are directly lifted. The image of the field was inspired by one of my favourite artists, Anselm Keifer, and the inlaid, coffin like images are reminisant of archeology. I wanted to make a work that took some effort to decipher and discover the various layers of images and yet presented a pleasing subtle whole.

40 cms

Posh Bastard's House (1999)

Lofts, IKEA, cool minimalism and soft modern. This is a decorative object about interior design.

The artists move in because it is cheap. The designers move in because of the cache the artists bring with them. The trendies move in because it is the right thing to do. The posh bastard moves in because it is expensive.

55cms

Video Installation (1999)

Here are listed ten sorts of work that I feel have become clichés in contemporary art. The novel soon becomes orthodox.

Stoke on Trent Museum

25cms

Primitive Form (1999)

From a distance this pot looks like one of the smoked terracotta vessels baked in an African bonfire. On closer inspection the black smudges resolve into photographs beneath which are further layers of inlaid pattern and marbling. A labour intensive version of a rustic aesthetic.

Private Collection

50 cms.

Driven Man 2000

All my dreams feature cars, skateboards, motorbikes, mountain bikes. I am a driven man. These nascars are sponsored by prostitutes. This pot features me in my Essex Man motorcycles leathers inspired by the Cerne Abbas Giant. The two cars numbered 39 and 40 represent my age at the moment, perhaps they finally know they are heading for the graveyard.

38 cms

Private Collection

Poor in Spirit (1999)

We are richer than ever but also sadder than ever. We cannot buy happiness. Miserable women shopping away their lives. Perfect hair, perfect clothes, perfect breasts, Prozac in their Prada.

Garth Clarke Gallery, New York 25cm

25 cms

Underhyped (1998)

The title stems from my attraction to understatement. The figures are all supermodels. Having been drawn by me they all look rather miserable. I like the way they look bored and yet they are not bound up with any narrative. They are presenting an image of the loneliness of contemporary consumerism. The patterns are inspired by North African ceramics and present a contrast to the sophistication of the figures.

40 cms

Contained Anger (1999)

My attraction to Japanese artifacts, I feel, is due to the combination of exquisite craftsmanship, sophisticated use of imagery and inhuman violence.

I wanted to make a work which embodied my own contained anger, violent slashes are highlighted as golden leaves, beneath the photographs of flagellation implements, my femme self and a sitting room, inlaid text murmurs oaths, perhaps against myself.

Private Collection

50 cm.

Quilt (1998)

When I made this pot I was looking at a lot of American quilts and its also a tease of Elizabeth Fritch. Its quite a simple concept where I was enjoying the illusion and the pattern.

The shape is classical Chinese.

About 60 cm

Mr Shit Sex (1999)

One of a series of elaborate urns. This one deals with male sexual inadequacy. It features images of men either seeking sordid satisfaction in loveless ways or perusing their hobbies which they probably enjoy more that sex. It also features an alcoholic - another way to let down your lover. These figures are juxtaposed with found kitsch which somehow emphasizes the ordinariness of it all in a very sumptuous setting.

70 cm

Glasgow Museum of Modern Art

Nostalgia for the Bad Times (1999)

This piece was inspired by one hot afternoon in 1975 when I wandered across the cornfields wearing one of my sister's dresses. I wanted an atmosphere of stultifying heat together with the prettified punk of wrecked cars and tea huts.

about 55 cms

Private Collection

Emotional Landscape (1999)

The imagery on this vase stems from the anti road protesters who lived near my old studio in Leytonstone, London. I enjoyed their anarchic creativity. They made the whole of their street into a massive environmental art work using the street as their front rooms and medieval siege towers came out of the roofs, bearing lovely homemade flags.

70 cms

Private Collection

Things look different on a Pot (1998)

When I made this vase I was thinking about advertising. I especially hate car adverts and their slick promises that I know will be unfulfilled. The svelte supermodels and the perfect body shells look almost rustic on my ethnic style, unassuming pot. I was interested in the difference in motivation in someone buying a flash consumer durable or a meaningful work of art.

55 cm

Private Collection

Strangely Familiar 2000

The surface is very much about layers. Deep down are inlaid a mantra of childhood pleas, overlaid with the skin of suburbia. The Wedgwood blue figures are following their sex drives into strangely familiar dramatizations of their early lives.

Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

45 cms

How I thought of myself (1999)

This is about my self image, my low self-esteem, the way became addicted to humiliation. It features photographs of my mother, father, stepfather and myself at fourteen.

I am in therapy

50 cm

The Language of Cars (1999)

The status bound up in these wasteful boxes is easily deciphered by us all. The shape is a sake bottle. The cars are finished in mother of pearl enamel echoing the vanities of the boy-racer. I have a love hate relationship with cars. They fill my dreams and my nightmares.

50 cm

Private Collection

Discreetly Branded (1999)

The models are selling something. Each bears a small label of a recent war. Each product I wanted to associated with its negative connotations. The transience of advertising sits uneasily on the timeless shoulders of a Chinese vase.

Private Collection

65 cms

Boring Cool People (1999)

I'd been to see the Patrick Caulfield exhibition at the Hayward Gallery and I was thinking how contemporary the paintings looked. I've placed a collection of stylish young trendies in a 1950's modern interior. They all look bored and are boring because they are scared of making a mistake. They wear the right kind of clothes, have the right kind of ideas. They are not creative.

British Art Show (Lent by Private Collector)

60 cms

Portrait of Anthony D'Offay (1998) (one of a pair)

Anthony D'Offay has a collection of Indian lingam. I wanted to make something which embodied my fantasy of his spirituality and his powerful position in the art world. One phallus is inlaid with the names of the top twenty British Companies on the stock market, the other bears the names of the artists represented by his gallery. For me the phallus' symbolize both a meditative spirituality and also make reference the big swinging dicks of the city.

Hot Afternoon in 1975 (1999)

Wandering the flat Essex fields, looking for something to do, aching with sexual energy, even the slightly mad girl who lives in the overgrown house next to the Pony Field would do, finding discarded porn in a ditch, a used condom in an abandoned old car, yearning for the freedom of a moped.

Garth Clark Gallery, New York

30 cms

My Idea of Heaven (1998)

When I was a kid all my fantasies were set in an elaborately constructed, imaginary world. At first, they were typical boys' stories of war and motor racing but when puberty came along the fantasies became more and more perverse and fetishistic. The two worlds collided in S & M prison camps and cross dressing spies

On this vase my personal sexual imaginings rub up against the kitsch, everyday ornament. A spirit jar for the suburban bondage fan.

Private Collection

90 cm

Look Mum, I'm a Jet Pilot 2000

My mother had a fantasy, often expressed that I would turn up in a Sports Car one day, probably with a flowing white scarf and rescue her from her marriage. This vase is about as near as I'm going to get to being a dashing RAF hero.

Private Collection

56cms

Prozac Millionaires

2000

I was thinking about people running away from consumerism, having been unable to buy happiness. Some of the figures are escaping press intrusion. Others seek escape in rebellion or kinky sex.

50 cms

We are what we buy (detail)

2000

These characters define themselves by their address, their car and the label on their clothes. They are at an art exhibition. I have to accept that I too am making consumer durables.

Private Collection

50 cms

Growing up as a Boy 2000

Seen in the context of an S & M nursery, each of the gaudy popular commercial transfers on this pot can by seen as loaded gender stereo types. I like some of these transfers so much that I gave them top billing on this pot. To list them: Prancing Brave; Roaring Mustang and Laura Ashley Farmer's Wife.

Glasgow Museum of Modern Art

43 cm

Working Class Foreground

2000

A directly quoted Japanese tea ceremony caddy, translated into my personal language of images. Hideous icons of pretentious council estate decor, coach lamps and cocktail cabinets in the shape of globes.

32cms