I’ve been down yeah, but I’ve come back brighter…
I’ve had this knocking about the studio for a long time now, it’s a taxidermist mounting shield that is used to present skulls and busts of dead animals, I made it a few years ago when I wanted to present my work in a unique way, it’s just a piece of pine, cut, routed and stained. I have always liked it and over time it has had many things on it. I happened to have a sheet of veneered chipboard that used to be a drawer and UCS had recently unveiled the Langlands and Bell Question Mark sculpture at the Waterfront Campus building in Ipswich, it was a slow day so I made a mini replica from the veneered drawer. The idea was to just use it as a little model but then I found myself making two speech or quotation marks also, I can never remember which is which, and with these I then placed them on the wall within a frame, I think I wanted to quote a question or something like that, anyway the speech/quote marks have been in my locker for a while and so I thought I’d transform the mount one last time… I am mounting speech!!! Or… I am mounting a quote!!!
I think visually this is a very strong piece, painting the flat part of the mount enables the marks to really pop, It has a certain street art appeal, an attack against the establishments that ask us to hold our tongues yet listen to all they say. However, it has been commented on that the marks do resemble a six and a nine, adding sexual innuendo in the mix and a natural want off of myself to say every time I look at it: ‘Sixty-nine dude’, in reference to the classic Bill and Ted line (but you have to do the voice otherwise you will get odd looks). I decided to name this piece ‘Glow’, (I am rubbish with names for my work) the reason being that; Glow is the name of an album by Reef, on said album is a song called ‘I Have Something To Say’, I felt this was the essence of the piece, although a long way round to get to the name.
I suppose this entry crosses over from the catch up posts to the more present day as it was recently sold at an auction we set up to help raise money for our end of degree show. But I kind of miss it not being hung in my space, by no means am I precious about my work usually but I had grown attached to that piece of work I made, through its many transitions it had reached adulthood and I had to let it go free. I have since been approached about a commission to make another one and although I am more than happy to, the transitional process of getting to the final stage will be skipped, losing what I consider to be its well-formed character.
I will see you cats on the flip flop later!!!
