Work from September 2014
I realised that I hadn't posted progress photos of my work from September last year and January this year.Looking back on this work is curious... it's interesting and it seems like a step towards what I'm trying to create, but just and experiment with materials and ideas. I went from the very clinical, minimalist object work in July to using much more natural materials and attempting a more active work. I say 'attempting' because it was an attempt and an experiment rather than a success.I found a great deal of enjoyment working with wax, wood and resin. I also found that scent and some sort of sensual experience is an important part of the work I want to create.Artist's Statement: "Examining the role of boundaries and thresholds in establishing areas of safety and discomfort.Creating ritual ‘happenings’ that instigate a transformation and leave behind a residue or resolution.I have started to push into areas I discovered in both semester one and two; working through viewers reactions to exclusionary subject matter.When an event happens inside a performative space how does that affect the viewer? What if it breaks out of that space? What if the viewer has to step inside a delineated boundary? Can a threshold be captured inside a boundary and diffused or made ‘safe’?"Holy Smoke: An Adoration of Our Star (2014)(pine, copper, beeswax, glass, obsidian, charcoal, benzoin resin, kauri gum, frankincense, Abramelin resin, voice.) Fools Gold (2014)(pine, beeswax, salt, pyrite, myrrh resin)This work set me up to look at trace and residue of rituals or other performative happenings. It got me thinking about performance as a viable practice for me and it pushed me to acknowledge that my work was too 'poised' and therefore lacked the legitimacy of a real happening, even when one had occurred. It also made me think about the positioning of elements within a space and how the viewer experienced them. Does performance occur in the space? How is it documented? What does it leave? Could the happening be about to occur rather than have finished? Could it be occurring during viewing? It also got me thinking about using the elements of esoteric ritual in a less obvious way; e.g. beeswax can say what it needs to say without being a candle.
Holy Smoke: An Adoration of Our Star (2014)(pine, copper, beeswax, glass, obsidian, charcoal, benzoin resin, kauri gum, frankincense, Abramelin resin, voice.) I constructed a natural pine platform/altar with an enclosing glass and copper box on top. Using the idea from John Dee's Enochian system of using wax as an insulator I filled the base of the platform with beeswax and sat the feet on 4 beeswax disks to keep it from touching the ground. Charcoals were set on 4 pieces of obsidian and lit to burn 4 types of resinous gum. A ritual adoration for the sun was performed (necessity meant it had to be performed outside due to fire alarms which meant the ritual was not in the gallery space and also a lot of the smell was lost). The ritual was then enclosed in the box where the the smoke pooled and finally died leaving only melted wax, charred carbon and a lingering scent.
The altar during the ritual adoration.
A test of the work at home showing the smoke-filled case.
Fools Gold (2014)(pine, beeswax, salt, pyrite, myrrh resin)This work was a broken ring of salt and basalt with a 'popped' box shooting resin crystals outside the confines of the circle. I used the same materials for this work as for the previous one, but although I really enjoy the objects and the overall idea, I think this work mostly failed. It was a good test for me to experience what would happen if I made a work like this and let me see how much further it needed to be pushed.
