Getting ready for the crit

The last couple of days i have spent finishing my sketchbook and blogging to sort out everything in my work ready for assesment. I felt i had everything displayed but then Paul said he felt there was too much shown so i have refined the display to less pieces which i feel works better and has much more of an impact. I then tidied up the studio and painted everythere. Now all that is left is the crit tomorrow, cant wait to hear everyones comments on my work and everyone else's work.

Deciding how to display the work for the critique

Placing the pieces on ready made plinths, to say that they are sculpture, on the floor to see what this says, however i feel this speaks to much of ritual and then around the gallery space placed to highlight their unusualness. By placing them next to a ready made sculpture i am directly relating them and juxtaposing them to classical figurative sculpture, this has an interesting effect and evokes meaning.

I have finished waxing the clothing that i want to wax, however i would like to try an idea in the future, where i stage a paint fight getting people to wear white clothes and then wax the painted clothing into sculptures. I now need to decide how best to display the pieces, whether to show just photographs or the pieces or both. I feel i definetly want to show the sculptures and feel that they are probably strong enough to be shown on their own and without mediation. So i have spent the last couple of days experimenting with different arangements of the pieces in different sites. I feel that although they are interesting outside the gallery i want to fit them into the gallery context and to show them all in one room. At first i tried a circular formation on the floor however this spoke of rituals and gave another meaning to my piece, which i felt convoluted the concept. I need to make sure the displaying of the pieces doesnt detract from what i am wanting to say about distorting the human form. I then decided to have more fun with them, not grouping them all together, having them all around the studio/gallery space using different means of displaying for different pieces. This worked much better and the pieces retain their unusual and fun aspects by this random quirky placement.

Experimenting with putting the pieces as a set into the gallery context, placing them in different formations to decide how to display them in the gallery. I need to consider how, where and by what means is the best place to display them. I am considering taking a photo of them in a launderette, on the streets of glasgow etc and displaying them, or displaying the pieces themselves.

Photos showing wax clothing experiments

The last few days i have been doing some more waxing in the workshop, munipulating the clothing into more interesting shapes, and also munipulating them by sewing before hand. I have taken items of clothing and attached them together and then waxed them. Once waxed the clothing needed to be munipulated at just the right time, if too early the clothing would collapse, if too late the clothing would be too stiff to munipulate and would then crack, hot water could be used to munipulate the clothing to a certain extent however not too effectively. I played around with balance, seeing what unusual positions i could stand the clothing in.
I found that the most succesful pieces were the ones which were self standing and the ones which people could still recognise that the objects were clothing. The pieces which looked as though a human could wear them were the most succesfull. I have also continued to experiment with distorting the body using the computer.

Taking the trousers (winston) for a wee walk around glasgow with Derek (aka Mr Moss)

Link to Erwin wurms work, another artist who has influenced me strongly.

Link to Alexander Mc Queen's Work, Fashion which distorts the human form

Continuing to cast in wax

Over the past week or so I have been continuing to experiment with the process of coating clothing in wax, i have started to munipulate the forms of the clothing more, by munipulating them before waxing, eg cutting anf sewing the garments and or by munipulating them afterwards by forming them with the wax. This creates some very dynamic forms and gives the sense of a figure being there without one being present. It is a very interesting process, however it is dificult to plan what the wax will do, it is hard to repeat the same form over again, each garment reacts differently with the wax. I like the fact that you can predict the proccess to an extent but the rest is beyond my control.