Category: Year 2 – Sculpture

These images are from the second half of my first term and centre around an exploration of Space. I approached this by using my object based work and trying to respond to it with other materials that have different properties. I also wanted to develop more of an experience/installation style work rather than a single object or series of objects etc. The first way I did this was by weaving sting through my largest sculpture, I used one continuous ball and tried to treat it like a line drawing that once I started I wouldn’t stop.

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These results were successful, I feel the string not only highlights the spaces between the wood but suggests new spaces.

(Space text from Andy about lines and things that ”arrest your eyes” being the things that construct space)

After this I began by making a smaller frames and weaving the string much tighter to create more of a wall not a net. These were mostly successful and the forms came from my old work and references to branches bridges, any sort of rigid structure however, i did not want them to be completely uniform so I combined the materials with random/spontaneous decisions about length or angle.

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Once I made a few of these things I started to arrange them in the space around me, at this point I felt that I needed to try and create a space, or at least try and draw attention to the way the objects relate to each other through space. I struggled with how to do this in a less literal way. Weaving between all the objects was an option but I wanted to try and create a more subtle relationship between the things I made and the space; like Phyllida Barlow or Joel Shapiro.

Whilst making I started looking at minimalism and the work of Dan Flavin and I was blown away by how he created these illusions of space with some lights and careful placement

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The final stage was to introduce the lights and try to edit down my installation, unfortunately this was mostly unsuccessful since our term was cut short by some weeks. However, I feel that I still managed to pull together a good collection of work especially considering the restraints we all had to work within.

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My initial feedback on these piece was mostly good with there being some comments about the lack of unity or sense of vagueness in the work as a whole. I feel this was fair, but also ironic considering both a lack of unity and sense of vagueness perfectly reflect the state of our course, my practice and the wider world around us.

I personally did not immediately recognise this however, the more I look at the work the more I see through the superficial exploration of materials and process to the unspoken message, a message I didn’t even know I was leaving. So in some ways this was a very successful piece, I am unsure whether it is resolved or not and will continue to explore this next term, assuming we still have a studio.

My next focus was making space and here are some of the intermediary pieces that bridged my thinking between object and space. I started this by weaving string between sections of one of my objects, this made the structure feel more solid and highlighted the planes of space between the wood.

I continued making drawings and trying to imagine a space where my objects or creations would eventually be, this is where some of the larger forms and new ideas started from.

I then extrapolated this weaving process into objects I made with wood, metal and found objects, such as the freezer drawer in the image above. Reflecting on this practice I can see I was trying to fill the space, and sort of turning these grids and grates into woven walls, playing with flexible and inflexible materials.

After looking at the work of Dan Flavin I decided I wanted to incorporate light to manipulate the space and also use it to create new spaces. I did this in minor ways trying to create a more subtle lighting effect rather than Flavin’s mostly vibrant/high contrast pieces; this was still effective but I feel but can be developed further.

I also wanted to incorporate light to enable shadows to come into the composition as well since abstract lighting cannot always be understood a shadow is a familiar form, my hope was that by playing with lighting in a subtle way the installation would have an unsettled feeling.

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Many of the smaller forms I made represent figures now I look at them, although at the time I was not thinking of people at all and wanted to stay away from recognisable figurative imagery. However, the fact that these references came out autonomously with random combinations of angles and lengths gives the forms another relationship to human nature, not just the figurative form.

These smaller ‘people’ like forms also create this sense of anxiety from the way they are twisted and contorted. They do not seem comfortable in their environment or in themselves; emphasised by the bindings of string and wire they are covered with.

Initially I thought this collection/installation was purely an autonomous exploration of space but now on reflection I can see the edges of an expression that communicates frustration and a sense of confused order, or organised disorder. This relates strongly to the pandemic and current limitations and restrictions and is interesting to see that even when consciously avoiding a topic like Covid-19 it is still represented in my work.