RL: “the old paintings
are very, very strong but they are full of didactic meaning… even though you
want me to get the obscure reference of the femme fatale and cat woman, I can’t
help but get the pop culture reference.
AM: “I am unclear
whether I want the kitsch or not.”
RL: “ I don’t see the
humour in your paintings. Maybe you have that wry sense of humour but these are
too brooding. That’s why the experimentation and the turn that you have taken
has put you in a new light. You’ve gone from… there’s really strong moments in
these paintings… but overall I see references to loaded symbols. When you bring
it to object making, now I have lost some of the references to pop culture, now
I am forced to conjure up my own set of associations. So, I am really drawn to
these – there is still growth necessary in the evolution. What I’m missing is
the figure. The first thing I thought about is what would happen if I started
building with these [buckets] and then I thought, it would become a figure.
Maybe you start to cast parts of the body and disassemble them so that they
don’t become a full body. I don’t think the form [bucket] is as precise as you
would like it to be. You’ve spent a lot of effort to layer them and create
these textures but you now need to spend more time developing the form that is
as complicated.”
AM: “When making the
last vessel I thought about making it human size, so that a body could fit into
it, and having slits through which you could see the inside and generate
associations this way. They are vessels/figures/towers”
RL: “ Well that’s the
next step. You’ve taken a wonderful step going from a 2-dimensional place to
3-dimensional space. You’ve learnt how to craft with these materials which was
complicated and that was the assignment you gave yourself at the beginning of
the semester – to work with these materials, to experiment and you’ve done
that. Now you need to focus on the actual object and invest as much
experimentation into transforming the object into a 3-dimensional mutation.
Look at mutated objects, humpbacks, cancerous growths, trees that have fluid
forms but have deformities. Look at things that grow organically and are then
interrupted by some negative process. That’s what I see – mutated forms – first
I have to see the form but then I want to see the mutation. The form is
evolving – maybe in a positive way, transforming.”
AM: “”Evolving in a
positive way”, is triggering images.”
RL: “Scale is so
important in sculpture. When you make something really big or really small, you
avoid the “standard” size. With sculpture it is so important, when you walk
into a room and see and walk around these forms, almost like an installation,
and you lose yourself because you become enveloped by them. This one [hand-made
bucket] is a strange size, the other two are an industrial form so they’re ok,
but this one is strange yet the most successful. Maybe you stack other ones
like it and build an object. Maybe they continue, like some crazy puzzle. All the while you’re thinking how the woman is moving, from
woman to cat, from cat to woman – how is the organism spiritually evolving?
Build it in steps, handcrafted segments. Think about the elements – this
segment is closer to earth, this one to sky, it may be flimsier.”
AM: “Almost like a
totem pole, incorporating the elements.”
RL: “I think this is a
really beautiful object, you’ve got the materiality down, now where do we go?
They could become like quilts, on a bed or hanging from a ceiling. They can go
back to the world of painting but they’re sculptural, you can walk around them.
Is it something that you put on you? Is it a curtain? Is it a human body? ”
AM: “We talked about
these [buckets] being the essences of archetypes.”
RL: “Yes, it’s a pool,
a repository. If I saw a group of these, and each one was different, then I
would be more convinced. The act of replication confirms the thing’s existence.
It makes something real – it’s like a mantra.”
“You start with an
idea and you remain flexible as the idea is bound to evolve as the materials
interact with it. The physical world interacts with your imagination and mental
world.”
“You could spend a
term working on form and learning all that you can about 3- D form. It doesn’t
have to be monumental sculpture.”
“ What if this
imaginary creature, you or a personification of you, this cat/slash woman –
what if you wrote a whole narrative about her and then all these objects will
become very natural. You don’t have to answer the questions, the stories will do
that. You tie in a series of books and then from those books you create
exhibitions that have all these precious little objects that you hand-make
using these techniques. That way you can have your character and you can have
your objects and they all live together happily. And then one day it can be an
installation and then one day it can be a painting, it depends on what she is
going through in that book, or a portrayal of a dream that she had…”
No comments:
Post a Comment