Artist statement

Grand-pianos, churches, boats, airplanes, hay-bundles, pallets; they all serve as a starting point in the work of Jonker and all have a common ground; they're designed by function.

By chancing materials or by placing his work out of their normal situations a new appreciation of these object occurs. A pallet out of tropical wood becomes a design object, a church made of railroad track becomes history.

In the work "homage to the RIB" (rigid inflatable boat) in which Jonker build a life sized working wooden rubber boat the direction of his approach becomes clearer. Objects designed solely for their purpose will get new aesthetic grounds of existence.

Last summer Jonker build a tugboat out of honeycomb-cardboard, a material mostly used in the packaging industry. Honeycomb-cardboard has excellent strenght, is lightweight and sustainable, the only weakness is; it's not waterproof.

With the help of a German company specialized in heavy-duty coatings, the cardboard got waterproofed. To proof that this combination was a strong one, Jonker crossed the Channel, being the first boat made out of cardboard to do so and was welcomed on the 7 of sept at Thames festival in London.

At the moment Jonker works together with Project_DWg architects in building a Festival Pavilion out of concrete blocks which look like Lego-blocks. The church-like pavilion is going to be 30x10 meters and 20 meters high, reaching a incredible weight of 600 tons.

The "Legochurch" is part of the Grenswerk festival and open his doors at the 24th sept 2011.