I felt really fortunate to take part in this exhibition organised by Paul Cope at the Halesworth Gallery in Suffolk. The exhibition called upon 101 artists to make work from identical one-foot wooden door panels which were sent through the post. As mine arrived broken, I thought I would go to the extreme by chopping it up further and then seeing what I could do with it. It quite quickly turned into a tripod structure, with various wool fragments and material tied to it. At its centre I added a largish latex and acrylic fried egg, as I wanted to do something ridiculous – and making fried eggs has been a bit of a theme for me over the last two years of my Fine Art degree. I think the concept behind this is a little Dada and also has Outsider Art influences, as much of my work probably does.
Along with the main piece, we also were asked to make 101 small works, the idea being that each artist would at the end of the exhibition, be given a box with work from each exhibiting artist. There was a template size for these small works of 6” x 6”. Initially I thought this would be a ‘breeze’… but later I realised that making 101 of anything is quite hard going. I created 101 small cardboard, acrylic and latex fried eggs.
This project was an ideal ‘found materials’ project, as at the very basis of the project, was the challenge of working with a given piece of material (the one-foot square wooden door panel). I am drawn to the concepts of ‘deconstruction’ and ‘reconstruction’ and artists such as Ian Pedigro, who use discarded materials, often taking them apart and re-forming and re-constructing them, interests me,. Taking the door panel apart with an axe felt daring and anarchic, but creating a self-standing, sculptural object out of it felt extremely satisfying. The idea of the fried egg being placed on it was a statement of the ridiculous, and as stated, I think that this was an attempt to work in a Dada fashion. I am drawn to creating an effect that leaves the observer failing to be able to psychologically categorise the subject, trying to create a level of shock that might range from the gross to the humorous. For this particular exhibition I felt that a more humorous and less challenging piece would be more appropriate. The exhibition was in a small Suffolk town, appeared family friendly and not a venue for a grossly shocking and really challenging piece of work.
