A pencil acts as a supporting strut, balancing its worn rubber against the edge of a marble brick. The blunted graphite point is pressed against the surface of enamelled steel in a moment of crisis before it breaks. A scribble surrounds the point of contact as the pencil’s position is adjusted until it supports the brick. ‘Suppressed Pencil’ is a piece of visual poetry expressed through physical and kinetic sculpture.
Lee Machell’s work relies on the material reality of the objects and media he employs as much as their poetic construction and implied narrative.
The works are animated; sometimes through live performance, otherwise in a frozen or suspended state, somewhere between harmony and fracture, invention and destruction.