Landscape with Lone Tree

Butter Wouldn't Melt (the melting)

This video shows how the Butter house melted when under the warm studio light. In essence the work is melting back into the material from which it was borne, I find this concept very interesting, for me it is an idea that has pure sentimentality. 

The materials are quarried and dragged from the ground, built and sculpted into a home, and left for an amount of time, but eventually the home withers under the elements and the effects of time, and it decays and relaxes again into the earth.  

The video is sped up to double-time in order to heighten the effect of the melting, although it may still be quite an arduous watch!

Butter Wouldn't Melt (the building)

one bar of butter, one 500w studio light

This is the building of a 'butter house', a work which was a reaction to a passage in a book called 'The Wheel of Darkness'. The exact quote evades me at the moment but I shall post it later on! The general theme of the piece was to create a work that would have a life that spanned a certain amount of time in an exhibition. By this I mean it would melt under the lighting over the course of a show, so that the viewer might experience the lifespan of an art piece. I am interested in how things may become mythical, or more interesting once they are gone. Butter was used due to it's physical 'melting' properties, as well as the fact that it has a nice link to the 'house' shape, it being quite a domestic material. The next post will hopefully show 'the melting'.

Paint Stone Circle

Table from my studio, found paint scratched from the table, desk lamp

A little experiment using the dried paint from my table in the studio. I liked that the paint was something that was unwanted, as it made the surface of the table uneven. So I felt it would be a nice idea to gather it and make it into something that represented monumentality and grandeur, like a stone circle.

This Way Up

Here are some photos of my work from the 'This Way Up' exhibition at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth. The idea was to have two pieces opposite eachother at each end of the room, therefore the viewer encounters two different experiences of my work, and can view both pieces from virtually any spot within the exhibition space.

'Work no.1' (dust form the corner of the room, saliva, 500w studio light) was formed of the dust from that corner of the room, therefore having a bond with the space, my saliva was used to glue to dust into the 'stairs' shape. The studio light is used to make the work important in the space, thus to give it monumentality.

In 'Work No.2' (found television, dust from the television, saliva, desk lamp, chest of drawers) the television was the space from which the dust was collected and therefore the place where the sculpture was shown. The television itself was given a home by the chest of drawers, and the light was brought in to complete the set-up and to monumentalise the dust sculpture.

Dust Monument

I am currently interested in working with dust as a sculptural medium, as it holds a strong sense of time and sentimentality and it seems to be a material that is essentially useless, given its utter abundance in our environment. In 'Dust Monument' and 'Dust Stairs', the process is to gather the dust, bond it with my saliva, sculpt it, and finally light it for presentation. This piece is an initial experimentation for a work that will be exhibited at 'This Way Up' (an exhibition by fellow 3rd year students of Fine Art at the Arts Institute Bournemouth).