Vaughn “Phillip” Sadie

by Rike Sitas

Vaughn’s cubbyhole-desk-room-pocket is constantly filled with a plethora of horded remnants of car boot chaos. To find the jumper cable to start my ever-increasingly decrepit ‘Moth’, would mean wading through a toolbox of light-boxes, lampshades and light bulbs (the variety of forms are unfathomable for the 60-watt obsessed). His fascination with the discarded, would border on fanaticism, if it weren’t for the carefully considered collection of memory-imbued madness. This is but a starting point for understanding the intricate webs Vaughn spins around articles of remembrance.

Vaughn started out as a ‘metallic-brown-with-yellow-handlebar’ BMX wielding fisher-kid in the flatlands of Heidelberg. He moved to the Durban beachfront in the heydays of PopShop33 teenage-hood, of fluorescent lighting and tourist-trapping technicolour. After finishing high school as a qualified engineering-under-study, he was quickly converted from a graphic designer into the beginnings of the artist he is today. His final exhibition as a student hinted at the aesthetic integrity he has aptly constructed throughout his work. This obsession with colour, light and memory clearly underpins a journey through both the physical and metaphorical space he embraces today.

Vaughn’s aesthetic integrity is clearly seen in a brief tour of his living space – where intricate and muted, second-hand histories satiate his home. His somewhat prophetic description and memory of the bicycle he once rode, clearly informs his understanding of space and place as nuanced and loaded with the fading handwriting of a letter that was once stashed in a book – whether love-letter or shopping list, pages fade in similar ways. White (as many other colours) slowly transform into nichotine-like stained memories of almost forgotten transcripts of foregone days.

Vaughn’s current work spans numerous mediums and media. Since completing his degree in Fine Arts from the Durban University of Technology in 2003, Vaughn has been involved in a number of solo and collaborative exhibitions, primarily dealing with the interpretation of memory and space. From painting to drawing to video to performance, Vaughn has been obsessed about the mediation of public (and by implication private) space.

So what is this ‘space’ that has preoccupied Vaughn’s imagination? Space is both the physical construction of space through understanding and action, but also metaphorical in terms of the ways in which people navigate the everyday spaces that surround them. For Vaughn, lighting defines the ways in which people understand and choose to move through a particular space. Light activates space in particular ways and Vaughn, through his art, aims to subvert these normative understandings of the places we as humans inhabit. It is largely through memory and social construction that we regulate our behaviour in particular places. Underpinning this is the notion that light is not passively constructed – we both understand and compose space through the ways in which we light them. Bright lighting is seen as constructive or productive for consumption (fluorescent shopping areas), while more muted lighting informs social and creative reproduction. Vaughn aims to challenges these spatial constructions both through inverting them and mobilizing them. In order to link Vaughn’s work through this discourse on light, space and memory, I would like to consider three recent works.

Firstly, Vaughn’s project as part of the Young Artist’s Project (YAP, 2004) hosted by the KZNSA is a clear indication of how he chose to invert the use of lighting through creating an interactive environment based on the notion of understanding external street lighting within the confines of a small gallery space. He installed concrete light boxes in the multimedia room of the KZNSA gallery. Each concrete construction included a laser cut of street lamps that were activated through the pulling of cords – much like internal light fixtures. Each light box cast a distinctive shadow on both the floor and walls. And as through many of his endeavours, his high school engineering endeavours should not go amiss. The light switches were rigged to work on a circuit where a maze of wiring determined the ways in which the lights would / would not turn on. This ultimately complicated the notion of controlling lighting both on a public (street) and private (indoor) level. This created both a conceptual and physical playground of controlling light and lighting – where adult and adolescent alike attempted to understand and manipulate the ways in which the gallery space was constructed.

Spill Light. 2005. Detail

Secondly, this inversion has continued to inspire Vaughn’s work. This indoor obsession of interrogating external lighting has spilled over in his investigations and experimentations with stereotypical indoor lighting. A more recent (Red Eye 2006) work that involves both the activation and mobilization of fluorescent lighting in outdoor, public spaces, further investigates the way in which both objects and space can be examined. Vaughn – once again – integrates his obsession with lighting and the mechanics of everyday things. His BMX has graduated into two whimsical, yet, hauntingly pale scooter-bikes that can be seen at the Parking Gallery in October. They fuse both uncomfortable yet familiar kitchen-shop-toilet fluorescent light with the restrained movement of mobility on a 100m leash. Vaughn has installed weatherproof fluorescent lights in place of the foot-saddle on two scooter bikes, which are powered by 100m power cables. These multi-functional and interactive installation pieces are once again imbued with the perceived power of lighting, engineering and functionality that playfully challenge audiences’ perceptions of how spaces are actively produced through light memory and lit objects.

100m sprint. 2006

Thirdly, in understanding how these concepts are inextricably linked, it is important to consider Vaughn’s fusion of these two concepts – the inversion of internal / external lighting and space. In this work, Vaughn combines his conceptual and metaphorical musings on lighting, with a melancholically nostalgic reference to memory. Here Vaughn activates some of his many car-boot conquests: an old X-ray light box; a love letter; and an unlit frame of a metallic Xmas tree.

for bearer of light. 2006. Detail

Vaughn is currently buried in bookwork. By day the lecturer, by night the student of a Masters degree in Fine Arts. There are exciting things to come…