About this work

Nat ruminates on the relationship humans have with nature and transposes his findings into sculptures. He also returns from time to time to his trusted copy of Keith Thomas’ book, ‘Man and the Natural World’ for inspiration. As an avid collector of various tchotchkes he finds on Ebay – glass pendants, wood carved goblets, taxidermy among them, postcards of dovecotes have become a mainstay on his mantlepiece.

Dovecotes, which often adopt the style or region they're plotted in, house pigeons and doves, the birds sometimes intended as garden adornments but mostly bred for the table. In the 17th century the birds’ faeces were collected and used as a key ingredient in the making of gunpowder. His interest piqued, it was now a case of how best to commemorate these peculiar, yet often very beautifully crafted structures. Nat would exhaust the limits of Ebay, thinking of every coinage for dovecotes to acquire more. Eventually, with his postcard collection now brimming, his search results running dry – they were ready to be made into art.

He fixes the postcards onto sheets of MDF, surrounding each in fastidiously cut sheets of oak veneer. The excessive swathes of wood he uses, in comparison to the size of the image, means the frames act as apertures to see through and are suggestive of the small holes of a dovecote. Accentuated, commemorated – mimicked.

About the artist

In his work Nat Faulkner often combines archetypal motifs and imagery with references to popular culture and recent events; in many cases this amalgamation draws from what is considered both ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, and is concerned with the resulting clash. The artist is particularly interested in rapid evolutions of cultural sources, often favouring the copy or adaptation over the original. These references extend broadly from ancient civilisations to Science Fictions, to film and television, to art history and the natural world. This means that his approach to history is eclectic, celebrating anachronism and ‘alternative fact’.

Faulkner takes loaded, iconic objects and symbolic images from both real and fictitious worlds and re-presents them; they appear familiar yet at the same time uncannily different or altered, the effect of this renders the work simultaneously elusive and accessible.