Overwhelmed – Alex Shaw

Man kind lives within an environment that we have created for ourselves, the installation ‘overwhelmed’, was erected to explore the world which we have built and to express the social and personal detachment which I feel has partially come with it. At which can we stop seeing ourselves as part of the natural world or order of things in a sense detaching ourselves from the circle of life, depending now on our own ecosystem and imperfect environment rather than living in balance with the other elements around us.

I was partially trying to capture the sense of being overwhelmed by these urban environments, I imagined navigating my way through cities and urban spaces exploring the mess of concrete like veins and artery’s of a larger organism of which I was an obsolete creature, through doing this I was partially reflecting on the complexity of the human environment and society as a whole.

The work was created using industrial wooden pallets cut down into smaller pieces and then carefully balanced with nothing to secure it, i saw this in a way as a narrative of modern human society, everything is so carefully balanced much like an ecosystem it only takes someone to remove a single building block for the whole structure to then collapse, i wanted to create something that an audience member could never view from a single angle therefore making them explore this strange and almost alien space.

Other versions of this work were displayed at the exhibition Limbo in London Bridge 2012, hosted by the group Endmor, a version of this piece was also very briefly installed illegally outside the Saatchi gallery during a street art project working with the group Innocent Art Collective before it was destroyed and removed by members of staff at the gallery.