The Daedalus Atelier

On my return to England from living in Paris I made The Daedalus Atelier installation at the Folkestone Triennial Fringe 2014, subverting the idea that the term ‘installation’ applies only to constructs unrelated to traditional practice.

In Greek legend, Daedalus is the artist and master craftsman imprisoned in his studio with his son Icarus and forced to work for Minos, the king of Crete. My studio became the workshop where Daedalus is imprisoned, the walls hung with small oil paintings and delicate pencil drawings, drawn from his memory and imagination, ranging across time from icons to pulp fiction, digital maps to cave art. These are the sky maps the master craftsman will use when he escapes with his son Icarus, on feathered wings of his own invention.

The Daedalus Atelier becomes a metaphor for the life of an artist, for the psychology of continually adjusting to experience and for passing these reflections on to others.

“Alan’s working technique is fastidious, his work contemplative. Around the walls, small gesso panels glow with inner colour, having been painstakingly glazed with thin washes of oil paint in the Renaissance manner… forms seem to be on the point of forming or dissolving, caught in the moment that the inchoate acquires substance.”

Clive Aslet, The Town That Art Rebuilt… – The Sunday Telegraph 26 October 2014