Castle brief reflection: Part 1
I really wanted to realise my VR installation ideas for the brief, but it doesn't seem possible this time around. This would have been a big knock if I hadnt been making other work for the show in parallel. I am mightily relieved that I had the foresight to do so and that's been really good learning for my studio practise in general.
After experimenting with a broad range of concepts, techniques and materials, I ended up focusing on glass and screenprint as mediums. They are both a good fit for what I want to make and I have a great relationship with the technicians in both studios, which helps the work flow easy.
Broadly, I am making work that looks at translation and generates playful and thought provoking paradox through semiotics.
My first works are glass based; both casting and slump. I am creating sculptures of a jelly and a castle in glass, challenging traditional expectations of the materials both should be made from. Translating jelly and stone into glass. Subverting the narrative. Asking questions about visual coding. Poking at the thoughts and feelings bound up in the collective psyche contracts that we cannot help but make as humans.
I'll elaborate a little more.
Unless one has lead an unfortunate and bizarre life, our expectations of jelly as a material is that it is soft, fun and safe. It is synonymous with childhood, celebration, play and innocence. By creating a pink glass sculpture in the archetypal child's birthday party rabbit mold shape, I hope to evoke a positive and nostalgic emotional experience.
The material that I have chosen for this sculpture is what generates it's dissonance; because glass holds a very different and specific space in our psyche. Glass is hard, brittle and can be dangerous. It has religious and formal connotations due to its prevalence in buildings, particularly stained glass windows. And it references Surrealism, which often employs the window as a metaphor; representing a portal between the conscious and subconscious mind, or as a way to access an unknown, deeper reality.
If I can cast it well and then cold work the glass effectively enough to make my rabbit mold slump cast really look like jelly, then these opposing qualities will generate a visceral and complicated experience for the viewer.
Building a castle in glass creates a similar paradox. We expect castles to be robust, permanent and safe. A glass castle offers none of these things, and instead invites us to reflect on our assumptions and insecurities.
The intended setting for these works, Nottingham Castle, houses many traditionally displayed natural history specimens and valuables. The decision to place the glass rabbit over the glass castle, like a cloche, is a deliberate and subversive nod to the castles catalogue. It also references the naiveté of the "happily ever after" fairytale lore so readily told, reminding us that if we do ever get to achieve thar kind of "enfing" it often comes at great cost to ourselves and to others.
My second work is screenprint based. Using printed red florist celophane as a base, I will install a glass (or more likely perspex because health and safety's gone mad) window frame in the grounds, which, when viewed from a certain angle will submerge the castle in jelly. It is provocative yet playful, diminishing the castles grandure while at the same time inviting my audience to perceive the building from an entirely new perspective. I am going to try and do a run of prints of this image to sell in the shop. I might even see if their café will sell some jelly castles.....
