Relics

2016, pen and ink on 300gsm Fabriano paper, each 30 x 30cm (40cm framed). Photography credit: Document Photography.

Relics is a series of four pen and ink drawings. Each work is composed through the repeated inscription of a prayer, written continuously in layers until the text becomes illegible. The drawings function as palimpsests, in which language is both preserved and obscured through accumulation. As the writing builds, individual words dissolve into a dense field, shifting from legibility to abstraction. What begins as text becomes surface, texture and feeling. This process draws on the repetition of spoken prayer, where language is recited to the point of dissolution. Through continual reiteration, meaning gives way to rhythm and sound, and the act of inscription becomes both devotional and mechanical. Across the series, variations in scale establish different registers of presence. The works range from small, concentrated forms to larger, more expansive fields, each holding a tension between containment and extension. The black square field is maintained throughout, situating the works within an ongoing engagement with the field as a site of potential infinity.