For this project I decided to collaborate with Ruth Blower. This is the third time that we have worked together so we know that it is successful, we encourage the best in each other and become incredibly ambitious which we seem to lack when we work alone.
We started the project with the ambition of becoming dream factories. We intended to create an object and then try to dream about that object, and then record what the dream actually was about. Then we would make that item. This would mean that we would have a collection of inputs and outputs and me and Ruth as the machines.
It was decided that we couldn’t influence our dreams and it would be better to just stop trying to dream about an object and just make representations of things from our dreams instead. Both Ruth and I had a very long list of interesting things that we had dreamt of. Neither of us can remember much from our dreams, just patchy images of objects and a rough story plot; therefore we wanted our representations of these things to reflect the unclear nature of these dreams.
We began making large structures out of chicken wire and modroc and then coating it with layers of thick plaster. This process allowed us to make the sculptures as large as we wanted. The main problems we had was making the structure sturdy. Modroc sets hard but it can still buckle under the weight of the plaster, so to resolve this issue we realized that we would need to build wooden armatures underneath the chicken wire and modroc.The great thing about plaster is how you can change the surface and the chalky and soft look of it helps to portray the dream theme. We had a difficult decision about whether to create a smooth bump free texture or to go with the nature of the material and leave the piece feeling rough and raw. The rawness that we chose for the sculptures reflect the ambiguous nature of the dream objects. We didn’t want it to be obvious what the sculptures depict but we wanted them to give a vague shape and sense so that the viewer can interpret them in their own way to represent not just our dreams but theirs too.
We decided to title our piece “Not Quite” because every time we begin to describe the work to anyone we always find ourselves describing them in a rather undecided way, for example “they’re not quite in reality yet”. They were made to represent something in transition from the subconscious to reality and therefore not quite situated in either. By arranging the 4 sculptures in a circle with the viewer on the outside it feels as if they are ganging up on you which add to the surreal and sinister nature of the piece. By using the spotlights to just highlight certain parts of the sculptures it creates the illusion that they are emerging out of the dark subconscious into reality.