But then that, too, would be appropriate to Orozco’s thinking, for the found object or “ready made” is a dominant motif in his work.On entering the gallery one is confronted by his Mixiotes, 1999 (the term refers to a traditional Mexican dish in which rabbit is cooked wrapped in cactus leaves), sculptures at the other end of his creative spectrum from Black Kites but which also use “found” objects – small coloured-rubber balls, clear plastic bags and dried transparent cactus leaves – which float suspended from the ceiling like seabirds or fish, the flimsy ephemera of leaf and plastic held in place by the weight of the rubber balls. Here the organic object – the skull – is overlaid with a geometric pattern which metaphorically suggests the structures of logical thought. Over a period of six months he meticulously worked out how to create a seamless graphite grid across the surface of a human skull. Grids and formal structures are obviously important and slowly, if one concentrates it becomes apparent that there is an interplay between the rational and organic, the structured and the intuitive.Black Kites, 1997, his most arresting and seminal work graphically embodies these concerns. As a teenager his summers were spent in the Soviet Union and Cuba and as a student in the late 1980s he led a group of radical young artists who rejected the predominance of “neo-mexicanismo”, art that dealt in gaudy commercial neo-expressionism and cultural stereotypes of a nationalistic sub Kahlo-esque nature.At first, the work at the Serpentine Gallery all seems rather arbitrary; a bit of painting here, a collage or sculpture there until one realises that there is a conceptual and intellectual thread which links one work to another. For Orozco seems to be not so much searching for the meaning of life as trying to establish a series of self-constructed systems to impose on the random chaos of the material world.Born in 1962 in Japalap, Veracruz, into an intellectual, left-wing family, he received early encouragement to eschew all forms of Americanism, including the English language.

Skill, as such, is not the point as, say, with a painter who may have spent years trying to master how pigments react one with another on canvas. Rather, his is a Duchampian investigation into the nature of the physical universe – its oddness, coincidental similarities and idiosyncrasies – with whatever materials happen to be at hand or capture his imagination. If you enjoy playing chess or the oriental game of go, if you are an enthusiast of cryptic crosswords or a fan of the short stories of Borges, with their labyrinthine narratives and circular tales, or one of those people who have to take apart electrical circuit boards to see how they are constructed, then you will enjoy the work of the Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco.
I use the word “artist” advisedly, for Orozco is a conceptualist who employs whatever medium happens to seem appropriate – paint, photography, sculpture, collage – to explore his obsessions. It seemed wholly inappropriate.”Last week when Charlotte and Annie, who are now 18 and 19, and live with their mother, gave evidence both said they could not remember many of the details about the day of the killing or of what they had told their mother.The hearing is due to continue today, when Mrs Jenkins will be further cross-examined.. “At this time it had never even entered my head that Sion was the murderer,” she said. “It was just his quizzing her about every moment of the day on the day her sister had died. Her only concern was that two girls, aged 11 and 12, should not be pressured.She agreed that, on the evening of the day of the murder, she had told her husband to stop questioning Annie about what had happened.

But she said that, in doing so, she was not accusing him of trying to tell her what to say. The defence claims that the girls’ evidence would show that Jenkins did not have time to carry out the murder.Mrs Jenkins was asked by the defence counsel, Clare Montgomery QC, about a statement she made that Annie felt it was “unusual” for Billie-Jo to have been left alone at the house. She told the court that about a week before, Billie-Jo had become so “paranoid” about her belief she was being phoned and followed by a man that a family agreement had been reached that she would never be left alone. “I was shocked about her being left in the house on her own,” she said.Mrs Jenkins denied knowing that the girls’ evidence would be helpful to their father’s defence and thinking they must be lying. It was alleged that, during a three-minute visit to the house, Jenkins had an argument with Billie-Jo, lost his temper, hit her over the head up to 10 times and then drove off on a shopping trip with Charlotte and Annie.In one of Jenkins’s grounds of appeal, it is claimed that his wife gave misleading information to the police to the effect that the two girls were hostile to their father and that this deterred defence lawyers from calling them as witnesses. She was called as a witness by the Crown in its opposition to the attempt by Jenkins to clear his name.Jenkins, 46, has been serving a life jail sentence since his conviction at Lewes Crown Court for battering his foster daughter to death with a metal tent spike as she was painting a patio door at their home on 15 February 1997. Choking back tears in the witness box, Mrs Jenkins said they dealt with it by trying to do normal things such as going to school or going for a McDonald’s.

She added: “I spoke to some people who had had similar dilemmas in their lives and they advised me not to run away from it.”Mrs Jenkins, 43, divorced her husband after his conviction and now lives in Tasmania with a new partner. Mr Camden Pratt continued: “It’s suggested that you were so frightened that your husband would return to the house that you chose to make up things that were suggested were coming from the children in order to protect yourself.” She said this was untrue, and added: “I was really frightened of the children telling me things. I realised the children needed to form their own opinions, as did I.”The girls “chopped and changed” their minds as to whether they wanted to see their father after the murder because they were on an “emotional roller-coaster”, she said.She also told the court about the ordeal of having to cope with the trial and her foster daughter’s murder. Never,” she replied.Mrs Jenkins, 43, said she hardly ever discussed Billie-Jo’s death with the girls, who were with their father on the day of murder, before his trial in 1998. He was jailed three years ago after new forensic techniques found his DNA at the crime scenes.. The former wife of Sion Jenkins, the teacher convicted of murdering his foster daughter, yesterday denied in court that she had “brainwashed” two of her daughters into believing their father was a killer.