Matthew Mark Roberts - In Pursuit of the Impossible

matt roberts

I am in pursuit of the impossible. This has resulted in a preoccupation with physicality and the environment we occupy. And thus I am constantly striving to create a spectacle. Without a doubt this drive comes from my other career, that of high jumping, of which I am currently just below international standard. I remember at a young age seeing high jump on television and being in awe. I think that great art is no different. I want to disrupt the connection between the eyes and the brain. Is seeing really believing? This is a question that we are used to asking everyday as we are visually bombarded by the media. Digital manipulation of images is standard and films seamlessly blur CGI with the real. It is within this climate, this culture, that I create the absolute genuine article, seeing is believing.

Banal objects are intuitively balanced, and briefly become more than their original function. These works are a bridge within my practice. They connect clinical perspective photographs to performance work in which the objects are replaced with my own body. An underlying aspiration to defy gravity means that success or failure is possible. This is a pursuit not without an element of absurdity as eventually failure is inevitable. This is something that I am determined to battle against, because the impossible is what nobody can do, until somebody does. I aim to be that somebody.