In my last post I described the process of making a maquette for one of my new cloth sculptures. The idea for the sculpture came about as a result of seeing some running shoes in a display case in a boutique store. I’ve long been intrigued by the way certain mundane consumer products have been elevated to the status of art objects – for example luxury handbags and running shoes displayed on plinths in glass cases:
I wanted to create something that would allude to these kinds of objects, but still be its own unique sculptural form. I then had the thought of creating something that was a mix between a fashion accessory and an ancient artifact…and an armoured helmet came to mind. I did a Google search and found the following image (note: it’s not a real artifact; it’s somebody’s recreation of a Norse Helmet):
I really loved the shape of this ‘artefact’, and envisioned my sculpture being a mix between a similar Norse/Viking helmet and something more sci-fi, like Darth Vader’s helmet. Here’s the original sketch I made of the artwork:
I then refined it in Adobe Illustrator and came up with the following:
From here I calculated the fabric pattern required to make it:
Then I made a maquette version out of paper (described in my last post) – and afterwards I finally built the real thing out of artificial leather. I was quite pleased with the effect it achieved – conveying that mixture between luxury product and ancient artifact that I’d set out to create. This was intensified during the exhibition when the sculpture was displayed on a plinth within a cube of Perspex – making the artwork ‘untouchable’ in the way that we reverentially display both artifact and luxury products. I like that strange way that things that we are theoretically meant to wear or touch (i.e. armour, handbags, shoes, jackets) are paradoxically made inaccessible – either via the physical form of display, or via the cost associated with buying it. The result is a curious ‘sacred’ space that such objects occupy in contemporary life (regardless of how mundane they actually are) – and generating an interesting ‘aura’ which is partly what I want to achieve in my work.
Here are some images of the final artwork, including some shots of it in its display case at 20-21 Visual Arts Centre:
