Roger Healey-Dilkes

(b.1968)

Cambridge, United Kingdom

My 30-year career as an artist has developed through differing forms of sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing and photography. I was brought up in Southend-on-Sea, Essex during the 70’s and 80’s within a culture, which was a melting pot of aspirational suburban DIY, service industries, eclectic seaside architecture, alongside the emerging technologies of computer games, and synthesiser music.
All of this has deeply influenced the way I approach my work and the materials I use. I like materials that are not caught up in a fine art context, that don’t subliminally lead the viewer through the whole history of art whilst viewing my work. I am therefore more at home on the bargain shelf of the hardware store, or the recycling bin than the art store for inspiration. My process starts with the properties of materials used to make, build, sustain or decorate a home, but have become surplus. These materials have inherent colour, shape, surface and form influencing the making process, yet they also have inherent contradictions too. Materials that are destined to make permanent partitions or contain produce for the home are made from temporary often-fragile materials, which through a series of manufacturing processes and applied surfaces, give an impression of permanence and then nostalgia.
Seemingly abstract, my work is abstracted and increasingly about iteration, repeating a similar process or conditions to create new identities and relationships. In all my work there is a process of dividing cutting and placing together. Through this process I’ve become aware that I’m both breaking and making a visual language. Ultimately there is directness by using regular shapes and combination that hopefully point towards new identities and an underlying utilitarian abstract visual language.