Construction Project Day #16
In the past few days an old friend of mine Gary Bolam sent me images of Andreas Nicolas Fischer’s work. This is an artist that I have never come across, sadly, but I am glad to have been introduced now. Gary is great at sending over interesting works of sometimes lesser-known artists I am ashamed to say I have never heard of.
In one of Andreas Nicolas Fischer’s light works there is a lamp attached to the end of a pole, holding up a hole ridden sheet against the wall… remind you of anything? With this image firmly embossed within my subconsciousness, it was inevitable that a fluorescent tube would end up taped to the end of my copper pipe on day 16.
Leaning the pipe against a white wall in my studio in Manchester, I wondered what else I could add to the arrangement from materials already available around me. A gathering of coloured cellophane has been piled in the corner for a few weeks, I have been wanting to do something interesting with them rather than simply shining a light through to create coloured saturate blocks.
The I used the cellophane as translucent coloured coverings for the sticklight, which in turn threw out hues in all directions; over the walls, floor and rest of the space.
In retrospect looking back at these images, I realise that the mirror is an unnecessary addition to the work.
Construction Project Day #15
On day 15 I wanted to dramatically reduce the amount of materials I used within the work to a bare minimum, so I decided to employ just two light bulbs and two rolls of paper for today.
I changed around the coloured light pairing between the three primary colours in order for the saturate hues to take on the secondary colours.
The paper almost resembles fabric because of its semi-translucent quality, allowing just enough light to seep through and highlight the space around.
As with previous works, I am interested in the balance between partly illustrating the working mechanisms and allowing the viewer a glimpse of how the light radiates, therefore highlighting parts or part of the gallery or space that is never normally recognised and demonstrating colour theory in action.
Construction Project Day #14
Lots of people have been interested to hear whether working in such close proximity to my mum in the studio affected what either of us made on day 13. It was certainly a healthy exercise as we naturally give each other confidence in the work we make; obviously we are fans of each others works and big advocates of each others practices.
I only need one comment or sometimes even just one word to spur a new idea for a work. As was the case for this particular work. Mum said; ‘you should think about cables’… and off I went, happily sitting on the floor of my studio twining white electrical cables around a stem of timber. The results are below in a series of photographs.
Having another person is also a big help in terms of manual labour. As you can see in the last few images I used one of my pre-exsisting large mirrors to balance to lights on top of. This mirror was used in one of my installation works in my solo exhibition ‘Chroma’ at BLANKSPACE in 2012. It is bloody heavy and needs two people to lift it.
I have been wanting to use this piece of mirror since this Construction Project began as it is ready-made and available already in my studio. Measuring 4ft x 4ft and backed onto a timber frame it is a lump of a thing, so thank goodness my mum was here to help me with it, so at last I can include it in a work.
In terms of how I helped her… well, you would have to ask her that question. All I can think is that at the moment I act as a constant support for her as she picks up her practice after a little necessary break. She is working on a series of small postcard collages, cutting shapes precisely and repeatedly into 4x6inch cards and placing them on top of each other to create a juxtaposition between the two.
