P A L L E T

Wooden pallets have been on the fringes of my work for a while. They entered my radar many years ago when I couldn’t afford a bed, so I made one using pallets. Since then my practice has developed & my material choices have been informed. So far, due to their size I havn’t worked with any pallets directly. However their availability shouldn’t pose any issue when the time comes.

There is one specific pallet form that I pass regularly in order to photograph & later draw. Its in a back street in the city centre. One side of the street has an open air, pay & display car park that is edged by Biffa bins. On the other side is a brand new 7 or 8 storey student accommodation building with a pretentious building name such as ‘The Depo’ or ‘BARN’. At the end of the street is a recessed loading bay with a roller door to an Asian supermarket. Next to the loading bay door is where the stack of pallets in question builds up inbetween deliveries. Over the course of a week or two the stack can grow from 2 to 20 pallets high as the deliveries are slowly unloaded inside. This stack of pallets in this space is a draw for me as it sits on the threshold of an urban juxtaposition. One side of the street shows off its real estate/ land value & houses the international intelligentsia & middle class student population of the city. While directly opposite rats rummage amongst the fly tipped settees at the edge of a carpark that is sprinkled with broken glass & scarred by potholes.

These stacks are always neat, they are always in the same place & always different. The differences come because the coloured pallets form new combinations as they are stacked. The 3 colours tend to be Red, Blue & a pale Wood. Sometimes the stack towers quite high so a second is made next to it, occasionally the second stack is made on top of one of the large bins.

So what is so interesting about stacks of pallets? Their large form, interchangeable nature as units & reusable quality all speak to my work. They can create large architectural forms that can be added to in order to make work. For me that would involve some form of printed material used as inserts. They make for interesting studies for drawing & painting. They are accessible, utilitarian, stack-able & can create large forms in spaces.