Started on a new sculpture today this going upon the theme of gold digger, holding a certain resonance with me personally. This sculpture consists of a vice painted in high gloss gold on a thrown like chair using equally plush materials to finish it.
With this sculpture. I hope audience participation will be achievable as the viewer/participant would be in full control of the sculpture.
The viewer would get a phallus place it into the vices jaws and turn the handle until the inevitable happens – it crushes it.
The images attached show the vice in paint and give an idea to the overall look this sculpture will have
Upon a chat with a colleague about the underlying message of women snaring unsuspecting men the idea of sirens came up.
Siren’s in greek mythology were dangerous and beautiful women whom lured hapless sailors to their death on the rocks of their island using their beautiful voices and song.
Sirens are depicted many ways throughout greek mythology. Early on they are depicted as birds with a huge female head upon its body. In some readings they are siad to have the chest of a sparrow and the beneath of a female. however as the idea became more romantic so did the image of the siren, they did however always carry a musical instrument usually a harp.
This connection nearly evaded me, the traps are used to lure hapless animals into them.
These animal traps relate to my coming from the countryside and i feel that these could offer a 20th century siren. These being specific to me as they offer a relationship to my lifestyle.
Affixed the mole and gin trap and mole tarp to two chairs I cannibalized. I’ve grown to call these the missionary pair (for obvious reasons). However I wish I hadn’t of rushed in an affixed these two as I’m not overly pleased with their size and stance I need a few more hours in the metal workshop before I’m entirely happy with them.
The health a safety monster has been around a lot recently at uni, it seems being artists we are not a health and safety enforcer’s dream risk to assess. It is in our nature to be scruffy messy and, well generally creative, something they’re logical brains cant quite grasp. Although I completely understand they’re views I do think that Britain and the world is being bubble wrapped.
As a result of this unrelenting shield against stupidity my animal trap installation will now serve as a relic with an accompanying video. Given the amount of alcohol that is planned to be consumed during the degree show following our rapturous and highly profitable degree show art auction this may be a good idea.
The animal traps shall now be placed arranged in a room with piles of crushed plaster penis under them and a video loop of the resulting carnage.
This post just show compositions and the playing around with mounting and the potential positioning of the animal traps in the compostion. These are a very loose base as it will inevitably fall to balance and the eye as to where they are positioned on the real thing. I have tried to keep the chairs basic shape within these compostions however, as the project progresses im sure the chair will become more and more blurred and turn into a seperate form entirely.
drawn also is some ideas of phallic casts to put in the traps that (being hollow) will explode and shatter.
The whole idea behind these sculptures is viewer participation. trying to evoke a reaction out of them.
Ive also drawn out a very rough idea of how i want this particular installation to look.
Following my recent post that featured Laura Mulvey’s take on Allen Jones’s work. I wanted to look at and discuss pieces of his work in relation to my work.
Allen Jones’s work revolves almost completely around the fetish and a stereotypical image of what a fetishist wears and uses.
From the reading of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. The outfits that Jones paints and sculpts onto his women show distinct sadomasochist traits.
“violent attitude to the sexual object’
‘the humiliation and maltreatment of the object’
if we look at the furniture series – a group of three sculptures of women dressed in s&m outfits and posed as a table, chair and hat stand.
these show the sadomasochism traits that I pulled from Freud’s three essays. Violent attitude to the sexual object – trussing and constricting these women in tight fitting pvc and leather clothes and the humiliation and maltreatment of the object – making these woman stand and behave as inanimate household objects.
If we consult Mulvey’s theory on the fear of castration we can see that Jones’s depiction of these women shows Third: woman as phallus. Women are displayed for men as figures in an amazing masquerade, which expresses a strange male underworld of fear and desire.
Suggesting then that Allen Jones’s subconscious was aware of the threat of castration women pose.
