Art Foundation-
Communal Spaces for Future Living
Past Education -
This Art Foundation project began with research into different installation artists and architects that created different forms of immersive spaces within an already built up area, sometimes even indoors. I liked the idea of spaces and experiences being layered, having a preconceived view about a place and its contents, then having that ideology thrown out of the window through the placement of a new space and experience.
Running parallel to this, I was creating block sculptures of cityscapes using scraps and off-cuts of timber I had found in the art workshop, material storage bins at college, and also further afield in places like B&Q, and Toolstation. Each Prep Piece would slowly scale up and become more and more ambitious and require more materials until eventually an open garden space with decking was made as the final product.
It wasn't just recycled wood I was considering using. I went through a period of considering discarded mesh and chicken wire to create almost floating spaces and planters encased in Perspex that would allow cuboids of soil and flowers to apparently float within a large grid of lines and metal shapes.
I also conceived additional abstract sculptural ideas using corrugated cardboard and paper, but I quickly discovered that I wanted to create a practical piece, to give the recycled materials an actual use besides being purely for display purposes.
Throughout my pieces I had used discarded and unwanted wooden blocks to make a statement as to wasteful energy and pollutants pumped out at McCain's chip factory on the outskirts of my home town. I created a carbon neutral, abstract industrial landscape that served as being an ironic statement about the carbon actually expelled from the smoke stacks at the factory, and also did a photoshoot there to illustrate the extent of the problem. This photoshoot would also serve as the instigator for my landscape work, both sculpturally, and through painting.
My aims with the paintings were to loosen my arm and portray the harmfulness of the factory's emissions and the building itself upon the local landscape through dark blocks and rusty pools that looked like oil slicks and spills. The separation of the [paint was achieved by spraying the pooled paint and paper with bleach, washing up liquid vegetable oil and other hydrophobic substances so the colours would stain instead of congealing.
My final outdoor installation was constructed in its component parts outside my studio, beginning with the base, which was made of palette crates I had salvaged from B&Q and the Garden Centre. they were slotted together in a grid, and then filled with additional planks to make a raised floor from the pebbles in the quad. This would allow for drainage from the planters I had made, and would also mean the wood would drip dry through the seams into the ground and then drain out, so it didn't buckle under bad weather conditions. The backboards with the shelving were made to house additional potted plants such as herbs, and these were slotted into the wood into small brackets I had made from MDF. Bamboo polls encouraged the growth of climbing plants, and gave the scheme some verticality in a three-dimensional plane, as well as on the backboards. Said backboards were made to mimic an urban landscape (but one of which would absorb carbon) and make a statement as to the future of sustainable garden design within an urban landscape.
My indoor exhibition was essentially a huge mood board of my process, consisting of scanned sketchbook pages, my sketchbook itself, additional blocks of wood, process photographs, garden models, and a printed photo book of the finished garden piece displayed on the other side of campus. This served as a visual college and mind map of ideas that summarized the project as a whole, and is typical in project conception and realization. This is why I wanted to display my work in this way, it speaks of my outcome, my process, and my own character and mind all at the same time.
