With the idea of order in my head, I decided to order my toiletry bottles in height/size order. So I placed the smallest items at the top front and the biggest items at the back bottom. This gave a hierarchy of height, which I felt was visually pleasing to the eye. To experiment with this more I could order them opposite, so biggest at the top and smallest at the bottom, what would this do?
The next arrangement I did was ordering the items in order from top left to bottom right by the products you use on your hair and face at the top and the ones further down the body such as hands further down. I did this to show the order they are used on the body.
This is similar to Hirt’s medical cabinets he installed. He originally ordered his products to relate with what drugs would be used for what part of the body. However he felt this arrangement wasn’t visually pleasing so rearranged them further to what suited in aesthetics. However I like how they work in my cabinet. Although some items are larger than others and perhaps set the balance off in it a bit I like the fact it has a specific order. Perhaps the viewer at first would not recognise this order, it would take time for it to be worked out which I like.
Once I had my cabinet painted I began to start playing around with the arrangement of my items inside of it.
With this arrangement, I grouped the items into categories. For example I grouped together; All of the medical items, all the hair, the make-up, body products, face products etc.
I grouped them as an initial starting point as I thought that seemed the most obvious arrangement to do due to the nature of each product.
I feel this worked well as it was clear to see the similar kinds of products were with each other creating system and consistency in the cabinet.
I began to play around with the ordering of the objects in the cabinet, however it wasn’t really working and I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with the objects and the cabinet. My first idea was to cover the frame of the cabinet in trains tickets or wipes. It was then in a tutorial with Robin he suggested instead of sticking something to the cabinet, to actually change the cabinet in some way such as painting it. Because the wood of the cabinet was so dark perhaps I was focusing too much on the cabinet itself rather than what was inside of it.
I sanded the cabinet down to get rid of any varnish, dusted it, and began painting with white emulsion. I decided on white as it is a nice clean colour that would perhaps make the cabinet look more spacious and blend in with the white of the studio rather than stand out with this dark frame it had. Maybe I am focusing too much on the cabinet rather than what is inside it, so hopefully this will help me.
My initial plan was just to give the cabinet a couple of coats on the outside of white. However because of the mirrors inside, it was now reflecting the very obviously unpainted frame of the inside. This really annoyed me as I wanted it to just be white, so I had to take upon the tricky task of trying to paint inside of it. It was made more awkward as the shelves did not come out So I had to work around them which proved to be a lot more difficult than I first thought. However after some time the cabinet was painted! I feel this looks a lot better. I am now keen to explore the objects I have collected; especially as I have a lot more now to work with.
I was looking through artists who inspire me and my work and cabinets of curiosities and even just cabinets become an item that keep cropping up. Thinking about my work, I decided to really explore collections I should purchase a cabinet as it would allow me to see how I as an artist work with it. It could help me to push my work further.
Mark Dion and Damien Hirst are artists who use cabinets a lot with their work to display archaeology, drug packets and pills etc. They are a common thing amongst collectors to show off collections.
I decided to begin with, with my cabinet was to collect all my empty toiletries. I decided on this as they are all different shapes, sizes colours, do different things, etc, etc. I felt it was still relating to myself and being personal to me as they are all items I have used so I guess in a way shows something about me from what I use.
I then placed them in my cabinet with small items at the top, larger items in the middle, and decided to place my frogs items at the bottom as they were already in there and would fill the space…
The Frog’s were a bit out of place to be honest. I think it was more to fill the space rather than them working with the empty bottles. The frogs may work well on there own in there and the bottles separate once there are more. I need to play around with the arrangement of the items too to see what works and what doesn’t. Perhaps quantity isn’t the issue it is the selection and arrangement.
