REFLECTION
Big Picture: VALUE to DESIRE to BODY
VALUE leads to DESIRE of COMMODITY and PRODUCT and BODY and IDENTITY
Concept 1. Commodity Gold to Product Butter (VALUE: Comparisons and Connections)
Concept 2. BODIES of Culture and Society VALUE and DESIRE Butter PRODUCTS and Gold PRODUCTS. The BODY tastes sweet butter and buttery products, and the BODY adorns and decorates shiny gold, on the bodies and buildings within societies.
Concept 3. VALUING SENSES: golden butter is sweet tasting / bright shiny gold is eye-candy and a visual sight. VALUING desires, but reminding the brain and senses to act sensibly, to fulfill our desires in moderation, for example to not over-eat or drink, to not over-buy products that we do not need. Controlling and understanding our desires: are they a want or a need?
Concept 4. VALUING Recycling PRODUCT: Bed.   COMMODITY (timber, fabric, steel) to PRODUCT (desired bed / disused bed) to COMMODITY (timber, fabric, steel) to PRODUCT (recycled products create new product = Intermedia = Video, Sculpture, Photography, Dance). VALUE Nature (Earthworm animals inhabiting a corner of the bed) surrounded me as I recycled the bed. This led me to VALUING BODIES.
Concept 5. VALUE all creatures big and small, thus their BODIES. Learn to love and accept, thus VALUE my own BODY. Learn to love my identity.
In reflection, I have enjoyed the variety of tasks in this latest brief: ‘Verisimilitude Real Sculpture’. I am a big picture type of person, who likes to stand under the shade of a universal umbrella concept to gain meaning of how I view society. I then approach the concept through the scrutiny of small detail (e.g., product deconstruction and reconstruction) to see the relationships between world views, national views and individual views.
Working hands-on with different materials, such as clay, fabric, steel, mobile phone camera and a computer App, I was constantly reminded how much I like to make physical objects. The turning point came when I observed Nature (Earthworm bodies) in above Concept 4, because I leapt at the chance to interconnect my previous concepts of Value, Desire and Product deconstruction to a new concept of the Body. As I destructed the bed product body, in the hope of recycling its parts, this fusion of concepts rolled out perfectly. At the top of the umbrella, the Body concept became a major focus, with my earlier sub-concepts of value, desire and product merging beneath.
I created a range of objects bound together by the conceptual theme of the ‘Body’, but utilising different mediums (photography, video, sculpture) and different materials (fabric, steel and clay). As I maneuvered the steel, fabric or clay into varying positions, I consistently questioned ‘What is real in sculpture and intermedia?’ To answer this, is not as easy as one first thinks, because life is full of truths, untruths, realities and fake realities.
During this brief, I experienced a few body-mind-matter realities, such as what in quantum physics is known as entanglement. My body matter became entangled with my experience of touching clay, because the particles of matter were shared through the sense of touch, and instead of being separate entities, the clay and I became one. In other words, I fell in love with the material matter of clay. I had experienced the idea of entanglement through my sense of touch.
Another reality struck me as I was deconstructing the product bed. Not only was my mind and body working quickly as one, ripping and photographing, I realised the material commodities of fabric, steel and timber (all separate particles of matter) had been placed together into a close-knit state, and were now been released. Therefore, through years of enclosure without air inside a bed mattress, the material matter had been worn, and smelt of rubbery adhesive, yet was still intact after years of been pressed together against each other as one. By stripping the materials apart, I was disentangling the particles of matter, releasing and distributing them, causing an interaction with their surroundings. I wondered if I could reconnect this bed body back together again, but in another recycled format. I questioned would re-entanglement occur if I created a new sculptural body that combined new material particles? Would an exposure of one material matter to the air create change? For example, the bed spring steel was not overly rusty hidden inside the mattress, but once exposed to the weather, it only took a few wet days to start to corrode and rust.
In conclusion, this brief has rewarded me with new knowledge and new realities about ‘real sculpture’. I, as a body of matter (full of entangled particles), broke a bed body, thus disentangled its material matter in order to recycle.  In the process of recreating new forms of reality (a number of new sculpture bodies) I created new material relationships and new particle matter entanglements.  Â
* Reflections of each of these 5 artworks are on the previous posts.
