PAN-PAN is the maritime call made to alert those nearby to a state of urgency. With this title, Parker has not endangered us with the MAYDAY of a disaster in full swing but alerted us to the period before, where focussed attention and careful action are demanded. Throughout the exhibition Parker employs objects and processes from the world, whose meanings are then siphoned and shifted. Public gestures and outmoded objects foreground Parker’s making and doing. His is a practice driven by the artist as maker, and one sensitive to the the minimum requirements for the work to be the work. The materials chosen are led by a criterion of need.

At the beginning of the summer Aspex undertook a rag and bone-style collection of unwanted domestic and small-scale industrial items within Portsmouth and Southsea. Selected artists then took these objects, which were no longer fit or have served their purpose and turned them into something potentially beautiful and definitely different.

In October 2007 I sailed 3,991 nautical miles aboard the last remaining Royal Mail Ship, the RMS St. Helena. I was on a voyage that would last for two weeks from Portland, UK, across the equator to the Island of St Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.

In autumn 2006 I spent a month living and working in the Lokaal 01 project space, close to the centre of Antwerp. As well as an opportunity to get to know the city, I had the freedom to experiment and develop a new body of work, leading up to a solo show in the gallery.