Tangly Sculptures #2

I have started creating more tangly sculptures, building on from my previous series from last year, in the following pieces:

I have been trying to accentuate a feeling of liveliness, a sense of something oozing and growing, that I felt was perhaps subtly present in my previous pieces but could be brought out a lot further. I have found that the glue holding the sculptures together is presenting some issues; it is not in keeping with the rest of the materials I am using, and as such I am inclined to try and disguise it in some way – something that doesn’t feel overly honest, particularly if I want my work to speak of materiality and process. Incorporating the sand into the glue goes some way to addressing this but I still don’t feel it is sufficient as it remains more of a disguise than building onto the process in any way. I don’t want to become conservative in my use of materials, so perhaps I should consider embracing the glue and really lean into its presence in the work. If anything, it could bring a suggestion of narratives around plastic and its own material impacts on the world, particularly when considering the deep time implications of the objects/items/things I am working with.

Suggestions from my recent 1:1 on this subject include: experiment with different glues/different ways of combining; make my own glue/glue gun glue with colours, pigments, or sand incorporated; explore other materials such as sugru.

The third sculpture also looks to push the size of my work a little further than I have done previously, although there remains an inclination, or a want, to keep the work fairly small – whether this is for practical or aesthetic reasons I have yet to unpick. In itself, the work feels fairly self-contained in the sense that it is fairly cohesive, a lump of material, rather than growing/oozing outwards as some of the others do. The clay feels almost umbilical, hugging in on itself, which, while is an interesting effect, perhaps feels a little too literal?

The literalness is something else that was touched on in my tutorial – I mentioned in some way wanting to animate the works, perhaps in some way filming them on the beach etc, so as to physically highlight the agency of material, but it was felt this might be too literal of an approach. Instead, it would be beneficial for me to focus on exactly how I can bring out the thingness of my collections through my sculptures, using them as a confrontation/encounter between them and the viewer in and of themselves. It would also be beneficial for me to look at Bill Brown’s Thing Theory with this in mind.