THE LAKE

-GRAPHITE AND OIL ON WATERCOLOUR PAPER, CLOCK PARTS, BRASS, STEEL, WIRE, MOTOR
10 CM X 61 CM X 121 CM.


In The Lake, 2006, the brushy image of a fish seems to swim from one flipbook-like boxy metallic machine to the next, producing a perpetually flowing shoal of three hand-drawn mechanical fish, disappearing and reappearing in waves of paper.





In Fontanive’s work, minutely toothed gears, clips,roughly finished brass, nuts, bolts, racks, wormwheels and sprockets absorb as much interest – and make up the sculpture – as the floating image before us, which seems to confess with pride the machine-made nature of its movement. Fontanive takes pleasure in the ordinary colour of things, presented without artistry:copper plates, black ink seeping into off-white drawing paper,causing a yellowy halo. Or the dull silver of aluminum, the uneven golds and browns of worked brass: together they generate a distinctive, unadorned palette shared across Fontanive’s artworks. -Gilda Williams