Hanging Forms

Hanging Forms

My Hanging Forms evolved in the studio through the combination of my unconscious thoughts and feelings, experimentation with materials and methods, and a deeply felt need to inhabit the space. My sculptural forms evolve from ideas that seem to lie just below the threshold of consciousness, in a liminoid field; I bring together hybrid elements, human, animal, insect, and vegetal that suggest ideas by association, a bit like writing poetry, the juxtaposition and weaving together of words, phrasing and rhythm to suggest an idea, an association of feeling.

Chrysalis (2012) [Muslin, chicken wire, plaster, string].

"The internal body, the abject,

is eroticised and becomes the

landscape

The hybrid object becomes a …

transformative, 'performative'

piece …

aiming to challenge notions of

fixed identities in its resistance

to …

categorisation and singular

interpretation …"

From "Immaterial", a poem by Caryn Simonson, MA Textiles catalog, Goldsmith's College, London. 1995

I recognise elements of my sculptural work in the words of Simonson's poem. The 'hybrid object', my anthropomorphic forms, which suggest a 'transformative' process, both through their allusion to the form of a chrysalis and through the process of transforming material into something else, sometimes by the use of plaster itself transforming from powder, to liquid to solid form. The form is abstract, suggesting multiple associations. I have dipped muslin in plaster and twisted it to make a rope and then wound it around my hanging form, binding it in swathes of material that both cover and reveal the form. I have used fabric as a metaphor; it contains multiple allusions: it could be a rope binding a victim or supporting a hanging torso, or a piece of meat. It could be the filaments of a chrysalis, protecting a potential new life that will soon break free in another form.

Installation with Chrysalis and Stefani (2012)

A swathe of muslin falling down like a curtain, suggestive of a bridal veil and a funeral shroud, the experience of hope, loss of love and life suggested by in a drape of material. it expresses my own lost hopes. It wraps itself around the hanging form, a chrysalis or a human torso suspended.

 

Hanging Form I unfinished (2012)

 

Muslin torn into strips and twisted to make a soft rope for weaving around a hanging torso. I want to explore the effect of using a soft fabric to give volume to the form. In making we learn: what the material can do and what it can't do, how we must change our method of making to achieve the effect. The soft muslin strands will not cling to the form as does muslin soaked in plaster. I have to find another way. The material suggests weaving, drawing into the spaces of the chicken wire I can follow the curves of the torso. I weave through and back, over, around, the material covers the wire and creates its own knotted surface. Like intestines it suggests internal organs. Winding and knotting the muslin to make an umbilical cord that suspends the form. Soft, no weight, I have lost the weight. There is still gravity but no pendulous presence, although the surface suggests the internal, visceral parts of the body more than the plaster piece.

Hanging Form II (2012) [Muslin, chicken wire, string

And yet, the long stem of twisted muslin, looped and knotted suggests the tension of weight, the pull of gravity perhaps more than the plaster version.

Hanging Form II detail (2012)

Hanging Form II Torso detail

Hanging Form II weaving detail