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Carrier IV
Rescued, Restored, Recycled, Relicensed + Customised - Ex SAS Anti-Terrorist Vehicle
Specifically Selected: 1979 Ford F100 4x4. Cleveland 351 V8 Engine + C6 Transmission.
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Primary to the artwork is the use of the combustion engine. The original base vehicle was chosen for its year of
manufacture and also due to its original ‘high end’ apex engine - a 5.6 litre Cleveland V8. A mass produced
diverse light industrial vehicle, once commonly used in most working environments and which assisted the mass
construction industry throughout the then-developing modernist world.
The carrier vehicle series manifests a parallel form of engineering; mirroring normative worlds yet further
extending purpose to broader creative applications. This re-addressing of design form also modifies and
subverts original meaning.
The forms of these works are migratory in their redeployment, fusing the old and the new - readily conscripting
various worlds of ‘build knowledge’, drawing from the creative arts, mechanical engineering, automotive and
design culture - as well as the military in this case.
The vehicles design is maximised again - focusing the energy potential and repurposed internal space
exclusively for migratory projects. Dragging, gathering, delivering, destroying, covering, escaping, situating and
ultimately sculpting.
In this instance the vehicle demonstrates a tensioning drag and the pull of a 1:1 full-scale domestic civilian
house frame to its point of structural failure. Very much an anti-monumental gesture.
Implicitly the vehicle also exhibits a direct example of contemporary recycling and the care to restore a perfectly
usable machine for greater longevity and extended use - the various Carrier Projects values assert an alternative
to purchasing unnecessary new vehicles - instead emphasising the need to adapt and extend previously
existing, readily adaptable systems.
Through the process of restoration and DIY manufacture one becomes familiar, more competent and aligned
with understanding the machines that surround us; fixing things oneself, tactile intelligence and understanding
via testing - is a large part of the experience of the project as well as its empowering affects in critically reengaging
with ubiquitous aspects of contemporary capitalist culture and its pervasive ideology’s - In this case -
the build culture of rapid housing construction, status myths and the politically reinforced illusions of domestic
safety.
These vehicle projects are by intention - duplicitous. All have been highly functional and supportive machines
that manifested an all pervasive Modernity - yet they are ultimately destructive. Machines that always consume,
burn and continually exhaust.
Houses, cities, contemporary technologies all continue to do the same. An entropic and cycling fuel based
feedback loop.
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Materials:
Found object, mild steel, stainless steel, fibreglass + resin, aluminium, marine plywood, Canadian red cedar
acrylic, 12v lighting, 1500w Inverter, rubber, foam, cork, 120w alternator, copper, automotive enamel, cotton,
720 cca deep cycle batteries, 120 amp cable, 60amp fuses, nylon, pvc, military shovel, sisal ropes, steel
towbar, steel chains, steel hooks.
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