The initial consideration before embarking on this pieces of work was to review the two piece that I had completed earlier in this part of the course. The aim of the review was to think about whether I could use them as a starting point for this final piece. The two works under consideration were the Combine and Construction 1, these are shown below.
I considered that both pieces had reached a conclusion and that to develop them well beyond their present state was not feasible. I therefore considered what alternative I had. The first problem was to try to find materials that I wanted to work with. I reached a point where I needed to allow time for ideas to emerge and not to rush into working on something that had no meaning to me. It took a few days for ideas and trains of thought to coalesce into a potential plan. In the meantime I set about working on a painting. Using a photograph as the visual reference for the painting. I made a number of sketches before starting the painting. Whilst working on the painting I could allow myself to consider options for the Final piece for Assignment 2. This is a technique that I have used before. In some ways it is a distraction that I find allows my subconscious to arrange my ideas and formulate solutions. The paintings that I have completed during this course will be documented and added to my blog under a separate heading.
I had found that I had various bags and drawers old electrical equipment, plugs, wires, phones and other discarded or obsolete items. Could I use these and if so how? I collected them together and looked at their shapes, colours and properties including how they could be manipulated and sculpted.
I still had the two pieces remaining of the thick cardboard that I had re-purposed for the Combine piece and one of these could be used as the support for the work. I deconstructed some of the wires by removing their covering and disassembled the plugs which revealed their shapes. These I placed on the support to see how they related to each other and whether I could arrange them into an interesting composition.
It was whilst I was placing, removing and reorganising the materials that Marian suggested that she could use some of the wires and manipulate them into patterned shapes. This was an interesting idea and I liked the collaboration aspect. However I didn’t want to just create a pretty pattern from the objects but to suggest something else, to move them from their intended application and use them in an alternative way whilst they still retained their intrinsic properties. The three patterned shapes are included in the final piece.
After much consideration I decided to use some wire to create and edge to the support and create a frame.
The next four photographs document a coupe of the arrangements and how I then reduced these down before building them up towards the final piece.
Yes, I now had a name for the piece, Totally Wired. The last logistical problem was how to attached materials to the support. This was solved by the use of a staple gun and Sellotape. I would have perhaps preferred to have used some strong adhesive but didn’t have any available and due to limitations of not being able to venture out due to lockdown had to use what I had available. My final consideration was whether to add paint. The thought was to drip or pour some household paint in a random way over parts of the piece. In the end I resisted this but will be interested to hear feedback on this decision.
A photograph of the final piece is shown below. I am pleased with how the piece looks. The materials have moved beyond their obvious use. The abstract nature of the arrangement suggests something else, is aesthetically pleasing and I hope demands a closer examination.
I hope to add a video of ‘Totally Wired’ to this blog when I have copied all of my posts to my OCA Spaces blog. Update 2/5/2020 I have now found a way to add video footage to my Blog and a separate blog containing a video of this work along with some drawing has been posted.
Mark Taylor 'Studio Practice' 