Adrift

Adrift, 1996
Robert Stackhouse

Adrift is not so much a specific vessel as a way to convey the essence of concrete types of vessel forms, or embody important parts deep within our memory.  The enclosing volumetric nature also intentionally alludes to the coffin form.  His images and structures frequently have the transcendental quality of things long dead rising to a new and higher form.  A ship’s skeleton from the bottom of the sea may take on cathedral-like characteristics in a gallery space or the open air.

“Adrift is printed on black paper which adds to the ship’s (the Queen Mary is the vessel depicted) ominous presence; water sloughs off its bow as it punches out of the gloom into the viewer’s space in a way that it would not if the underlying black were a printed surface.”

– excerpt from Robert Stackhouse: Editions Archives –