from the DIS-INTEGRATIONS catalogue...
The basic duality of dis-integration is part and parcel of Shepherd’s working process and of his sculpture. Each piece of installation sculpture is ephemeral, constructed only for the duration of the particular show; yet, from the destruction of one piece comes the elements of the next. Shepherd deliberately recycles; he re-integrates some of the same basic materials and objects into succeeding pieces.
Many of his pieces have been exploring conflicting formal order with random chaos; rational construction with improvised interference. The French term ‘bricolage’ was given wide currency by the anthropologist Claude Levi- Strauss. For Levi- Strauss ‘bricolage’ - fabrication - conveys the idea of improvisation: ‘knocking together’, fixing up and making do with available materials. It seeems an apt terminology to apply to Shepherd’s work. He is fascinated by the ‘bricolage’ qualities of the modern environment [ he is continually drawn to Cardiff’s dockhands and city building-sites, for instance ], and in his own work,through exploring the ‘chance’ qualities of much of modern sculpture, he has been making his own sculptural ‘bricolage’. Shepherd has variously integrated commonplace materials, found objects and images into the artifice of sculpture making, effectively sustaining an on-going exchange between contrived invention and every-day phenomena.
In the present piece Shepherd extends his long -standing interest in building-Sites and demolition Sites; these sites/sights resonate with meaning for the inhabitants of any living city; never more so than now in Cardiff, of course. In this piece Shepherd works to encapsulate the contradictory qualities of these modern sites, by constructing order and effecting destruction simultaneously. For him it opens up the idea of art-making as a dynamic process, involving the continual transmutation of forms, materials and objects and the coexistence of oppositions within an on-going system.
Carol McKay
