Finding forms and trying to find words
I have finished working on the sculptures for The Bacchae performance, and I want to return to the stony tangles I was making last year. I had been experimenting with Jesmonite (a crushed stone/concrete/acrylic composite), modelling and shaping it over a steel armature.
I previously made a linear black tangle accented with white lines. The lines dance across and between the different physical curves as you move about the form, until from one perspective it is is as if a line is slicing directly through the form. The intention is to create a relationship between the work and the viewer, where the sculpture is an active participant in a conversation.
The white vein is striking but difficult to construct. I want to experiment more and improve this technique, to get the effect I’m after- a line that only exists from one perspective. If I can figure out a good method for doing this I’ll try adding more lines.
I made other tangles in solid colours: terracotta, white, mustard yellow. Fluid forms with surfaces of sandstone, seemingly capable of movement or intention. I placed them in various relations to each other – side by side, in pairs, or entangled together – to learn how they interact. I like the scale of these works- at about 30 -70 cm across, they are nice to run your hand over and can be positioned in different ways.
Because I move them about the studio, and because they can be easily carried, I’ve imagined people walking around an urban landscape with these sculptures and placing them at different vantage points, like a flash sculpture performance.
But why would they be doing that? Blank expanses are full of potential: I imagine directing people as they move around, positioning sculptures in city squares in a similar way that I think of making marks on a blank page, or of actors performing on a stage. At times I take an idea explored in drawing and wonder what it is, how can I bring the impulse into a physical space, a form into being.
And then, once realized, how might this form relate to the world? I’ve read of authors who talk about the act of writing in this way- they give voice to a character and then the character moves, speaks, and thinks almost independently of the writer – at these times, the writer simply seems to be a facilitator, enabling the characters to do so. Similarly I make a piece, then place it on the floor, or in a corner, or on top of, or going through another form. As the sculptures and the environment explore each other, I get to know and understand their meaning and intent, different possibilities for expression.
Though some of my studio works can be held in your arms or hands, I can also imagine these same works to be very large, as forms to climb on or through. My large flexible steel sculptures have given me ways to experiment with such scales, for example creating dynamic spaces that dancers could move through.
During my residency at Aldeburgh Beach Lookout Tower and Art Space, I wrapped the sculptures in white cloth or in coloured mesh to add substance to them visually, while keeping the works lightweight. This was a way to work with them dynamically.
Currently I’m thinking of these tangles as pathways, or journeys or moments when something comes into being. They are spacious objects, mere lines in space yet somehow substantial. It’s always tricky to find words to describe ideas that have been developed non-verbally and expressed in form, but this is one of the ways I work to explore meaning.
I tend to stick to rather minimal forms and materials. I could introduce fur, or teeth or garish colours, or make sculptures that leak... actually, that does sound kind of fun, and maybe some day I’ll do that. But for right now, I’m finding that the simplicity of form lends an expressive ambiguity. I am captured by this sparse and alluring austerity of form.