Beings

BEINGS is a photobook by Leeds-based artist Philip Welding.

Objects come into being with an intended purpose; a reason to exist. This ‘stuff’ then sloshes around the everyday, like detritus: sometimes being useful (as intended); sometimes just being stuff. The area outside these two states is like a transformation, when an object or an environment can be seen as a separate entity from its particular function. In BEINGS, objects and environments are what they appear to be; a cheese pot, a ladder, a piece of laminate flooring, a road. However, they are also constituent parts of a larger whole, like the matter from which they are themselves made. Where these object-particles collide they create something new that is without a particular purpose, but which takes on a new sculptural form. In this context of remixing the everyday, some subjects instead sit as-found. Sitting in the glow of their reconfigured counterparts, they are somehow altered by association. They have a sculptural potential radiating beyond their use-function.

Unknown beings have made and designed all this stuff, and others have left it in the world for me to find. Some have done strange things with it, perhaps because of boredom or to resist the everyday routine. I have reciprocated, and done strange things also. Whoever is ultimately responsible, these photographs are representative of human endeavour, both purposeful and playful. As I’ve said before, it’s all just stuff.