Site Intervention – Cornwall Park

For the start of my brief this week before hand-in, I decided to work more with scale in Cornwall park and also wanted to experiment with the environment itself, to see how I could utilize the space to assist my assemblages.

I have been thinking about the idea of what is real, in terms of ‘real life’ sculpture and also digital sculpture. It is interesting because essentially, the objects you are making digitally are real because they have been made. The nature of which it was made is technically irrelevant, just because a movie isn’t ‘real life’ doesn’t mean it is not real. It is an interesting concept. In consideration of this, and my want to incorporate scale – particularly large scale – into my sculptures. My abilities in ‘real life’ scale are small, I can not create a huge assemblage that is bigger than a tree. But through my use of photoshop, I have the ability to create an assemblage that is large in scale. I can edit my sculptures to be huge against the normal-sized person. This is exactly what I did for my site interventions!

While I was researching scale specifically to do with sculpture, I found, and also came to realize with personal experience, that people are naturally more intrigued by large-scale artworks. When viewing smaller works, it’s quicker to identify the entire context, the opposite happens when they are larger. You are only able to take in one aspect of the work, in order to see the entirety of it, you must step back, and when viewing a sculpture, walk around the object in order to see it completely. Naturally, the viewers take more time to analyze and assess the artwork, therefore making it more memorable, and having a better understanding of it. However, when working with a smaller scale, the context can be easily identified, in some ways, this is helpful to the artist when attempting to send a particular message or theme. It is an interesting juxtaposition when you create something that is originally small, large. Insects are small, and they are most often identified because of their shape before anything else. When making an insect small, even when removing their ‘natural; colours and genetic makeup, they are still easy to identify. When you scale up this size, even though they are most commonly related to being small, it is easy to see that they are insects. I was interested in this and so I decided to attempt to create my own insect sculptures.

I made this butterfly sculpture using an apple and some wire. I thought that the apple would make a nice shape and colour for the wings, and used the metal for the body. I chose to do a butterfly because I think that the shape of the wings, and the way they span much farther than the body, would make for an interesting sculpture. I enjoy how the viewer (Flatmate Josh) is helping to show the relationship between the assemblage and the viewer in this photo. He can walk underneath the wings, he could also touch it if he wanted to. After doing the digital assemblages, I found that considering the relationship between the sculpture and its exhibiting space, and how it can impact the viewer, can allow for the artwork to become much more effective. I hoped to show my consideration of this on my site. There is a boundary between the viewer and the sculpture, but the boundary is broken by the sculpture itself. The hill looks as though it climbs up towards the wings. It is an interesting site to place this sculpture on because the site itself helps the viewers to identify the assemblage, to see all of the different parts of it even though it is huge. It looks as though the sculpture is meant for this space.

Colour can change the impact that an object can have on the viewer. Something that originally would be scary, can become interesting and welcoming when utilizing colours, the same happens in the opposite way. Bright colors are most commonly identified to communicate a feeling of safety or welcoming. Spiders in particular are known to be scary, and they are largely identified in black. I was interested in seeing what the effect would be if I made a spider, much larger than a normal one, using bright colours. The interesting concept of this is that, more often, if spiders are considered to be scary when they are small and are then made larger, they would become more frightening. But with a different combination of colour, the reaction from the viewer can become very different. When placing my spider assemblage in this site, my flatmates and I honestly started to find it funny. The assemblage was flailing in the wind, it was only just holding on to the tree with the yarn. What made it funnier was that you could see the assemblage from very far away. And when you could see it flying everywhere off of the tree branch in a blur of orange, it implored you to have a closer look at it. This was an interesting exercise to attempt. I did not expect the reaction that I had when viewing the spider. My flatmates even had the idea for me to create multiple of them and place them around Cornwall park. It could be a very interesting avenue to explore!

I must say that I am also interested in the relationship between my assemblages. The photo with both my butterfly and spider in it was what sparked my interest. I found it interesting how these two assemblages only communicate the shape, and anatomy of the insects I am describing, but when placed in a context such as a predator, prey, composition, the context and meaning are easily identifiable without the caption.

I think that my assemblages were in one way or another, quite successful. I hope that my next assemblages are made with a little bit more dignity – they won’t fall to pieces or unravel as easily. But I am interested to see where this will take me, and what others will suggest in the critique tomorrow!