Pink Sculptures

In response to comments surrounding disguising vs embracing my use of glue, I have created the following pieces:

I was looking to be more honest with my materials, drawing attention to my use of a completely artificial, plastic glue rather than disguising it as I have been inclined to do previously. Not only did I highlight the use of the glue through the pink acrylic paint, I also applied the glue more intentionally, adding more almost as though creating seams, so that it would create a more defined surface to paint. In some ways this does still act as a disguise: it covers up the glue, making it less easily readable/recognizable. However, this opaqueness of the material creates a more confronting material encounter – the viewer is less easily able to simply label/place/categorise what they are seeing, prompting closer, more curious, investigation. The pink seaweed highlights this even further, being even less recognisable, furthering this sense of material confusion.

The choice of the bright pink was inspired in part by Ugo Rondinone’s brightly coloured stones:

There is something particularly striking about the neon colours in an otherwise ‘natural’ environment, the artificiality of the colour bringing out the subtler tones of their surroundings, and vice versa. In the case of my pieces they make me think of plastic intrusions, a humanness injected back into something that has begun to move away from the human.

I also recently showed these pieces in the Goldfish Bowl Gallery’s opening show Introduction:

I chose to exhibit them in close dialogue with a drawing in response to David’s comments on the relationship between my sculptures and drawings in my studio space, especially after experimenting with this in the open studios. In such close proximity there is a sense that I have forced them into conversation with one another, whereas perhaps in my studio there was a bit more space for the viewer to make their own connections? However, I do feel they successfully each accentuate/bring out a liveliness in each other that perhaps they do not achieve on their own, and in this way establish an interesting dynamic between two and three dimensions, translating and shifting between the two. Perhaps moving on from this I could explore conflating the two? Making this more literal – bringing drawing onto my sculptures etc?