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Text by Sarah Tutt, October 2020

A seam. A connector. A join. Audible. A trembling. A process.

On viewing WHEN SEAMS BECOME AUDIBLE, one immediately knows this work is conceived by Fitz. Signature acts of translation and transformation are visible - the space is filled with an architectural and industrial vernacular; elemental forms are honed from the space in which they sit; there is raw yet precise use of unadulterated materials.

This work is physical. The labour of manual processes is tangible - turning, pulling, pressing, carving, extracting, pouring, wrapping, peeling and casting. They require the body of the artist as a tool, as energy and as a force. A tight taxonomy of colour and texture holds the elements together. The palate is familiar but developed - exhumed from the materials themselves – with muted, dusty tones of the flesh of plaster, unglazed ceramic, unadulterated metal and wood and the pale skin of latex and hessian. The 2D profiles of the space are translated into a series of 3D corporeal bodies. We are initially confronted by a heavy, seamed, wounded carcass of a body hanging from chains, in a state of suspended animation. It demands to be looked at, offering us a 360degree view of its surfaces and fissures. Other works play out through the space as if extensions to it. It is as if the space-as-body has been recut, reconfigured and recalibrated. It is as if the space has given birth to iterations of itself. All elements are as interior to the space as a foetus is to a belly. A genetic code has been imprinted from the walls, windows, ceilings and surfaces of the surrounds, and corporeal wounds, veins and skin have been inherited.

This work is born of the space. It has been made in the space, not imported. We walk not only around a gallery but also around the artist’s studio, where sculptural forms beckon us to trace a journey from one to another. It is in this tracing that we, the viewer, stitch the work together. We provide the thread. It is perhaps in this stitching when seams become audible.

Walk, breathe and listen.