Upper Sixth student Reuben D has played a vital role in bringing a major new artwork to life at Rochester Cathedral, earning high praise from local artist Matthew Darbyshire for his extraordinary commitment and hard work throughout the project.
Reuben assisted Darbyshire in constructing White on White, an ambitious sculpture commissioned by Rochester Cathedral that was thirty years in the making.
The piece traces its origins back to Matthew’s student days at the Slade School of Fine Art, where a visiting tutor originally cautioned him against the idea. “White on White is an artwork I tried to make 30 years ago at Slade art school before visiting tutor Rachel Whiteread advised me not to,” Darbyshire recalled. “She said it would take too long and leave me broke. She was probably right, but I’ve never been able to let it slide, and so when Rochester Cathedral recently asked me to make a work for them – albeit 30 years late to the party – I couldn’t resist.”
To safely execute the complex design, Matthew adapted his production methods. “My original nineties plan used moulded fibreglass sections, but in an effort to save my lungs, this this time I opted for smaller vacuum-formed modules,” he explained.
At the heart of the sculpture is a portable trailer, reflecting the artist’s conceptual roots and a desire for creative refuge. “The trailer’s always been vital to the work. It had to be portable so I could run away in it,” Darbyshire shared. “Surrounded then by incredible tutors from the ‘60s conceptual era, there was a complete semiotic overload that made me so fearful of reference that I decided I had to cut myself off completely – hence the haptic, womb-like escape offered by my ‘ultimate solution’, the serene sphere. Nothing’s really changed; I’m still struggling to reconcile the formal, physical, functional, social, symbolic, invisible and interactive within my work, but perhaps just more accepting now of Marcel Duchamp’s maxim ‘there are no solutions because there are no problems’.”
White on White is now on display as part of Rochester Cathedral’s free Art on the Delta until Saturday, 29 August. More information here.
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