My Father was an Impact Crater, 2019
Proposal for Burlington Gate, London
Description:
This looming organic sculpture encompasses forms, images, and materials that refer to geology, biology, and infrastructure. The artwork embodies the presence of a large hybridised organism, simultaneously like a rock and a tree, with long tentacle-like “branches” growing out and rooting themselves to the gravel covered floor of the Burlington Gate vitrine.
This proposed sculpture is made of economical materials which include, a timber armature, chicken wire, papier-mâché’, and digital prints. The flexible ducting is fixed to the form with aluminium armature wire which also gives the lengths of blue flexible ducting their curvilinear formations.
Background Information:
This proposal is a continuation of a piece I made as an artist-in-residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in the Autumn of 2018. Whilst exploring Omaha, Nebraska, I discovered an extraordinary rock pile.
These rocks had an enormous variety of texture and colour. I very much wanted to work with these rocks, but they were large, heavy, and clearly belonged to someone else. I decided to take detailed high-resolution digital photographs of the rocks instead of trying to bring them into my studio.
I made a papier-mâché’ sculpture in my studio and then clad it with enlarged digital images of the rock pile which then became a stop frame animation.