Work #1

Work #1 (detail), 2009

Work #1, 2009

I've just exhibited again at Ishihara, this time was a little bit different. It was guest curated by my friend Oliver Topple and he had decided to theme the exhibition under 'outsider art'. I have had this egg magnet on the fridge at home since I made it at school age 11 and had recently brought it down to Bournemouth with me. This is the first object I'd planned and built from construction materials on our induction to the workshop at our new school. I enjoyed the way it was so badly and so obviously made. I also enjoyed the way I appreciated these brutal construction techniques more now than then and how my treasuring of the object had grown after studying constructing these objects more. Without wanting to change the egg itself but also without wanting it to get lost in the exhibition I decided to build an elaborate plinth, projecting a status onto it and voicing these ideas.

Iceberg.

Iceberg, 2009

I made these polystyrene icebergs in the studio recently, I'm trying to understand this draw I have to these manufactured/packaging materials. Something that promotes a status about these objects is the element of travel in their lives. I like the polystyrene taking on this Iceberg form, it has this history of taking on epic journeys and their is something quite odd yet playful about it being delivered on a wooden pallet. From recently applying to a few graduate competitions I have realized that the type of work I have been producing (temporary large scale structures) has left me with a small amount of physical work to show. I wanted to make something that i could keep, for a while at least. I find this idea of a block of ice, paused in its melting process, quite poetic and at the same time it refers back to the materials being used and what is actually happening in the work.

Drawings for proposed work.

Cloud Room, 2009

Icebergs, installation veiw, 2009

Recently I have started to use digital mediums to visualise and plan future installations. I have made a link between these drawn artificial scenarios and the sculptural interventions to the sites I have been working in. Although the situations in which we are presented with are clearly staged, something seduces us into accepting what is happening and this is something Id like to further explore. In this light I have started to veiw these drawing as a good communication of this idea and something i could push as a finished work. I have also found a link between my use of manufactured materials and the staged, temporary scenarios i am creating. When these materials are first formed they are so clean cut and fresh they almost dont seem part of the world, they dont hold that evidence of the human touch. I thinking about the work of Peter Demand, his architectural scenes constructed beautifully from painted cardboard and displayed in photographs, at first glance these look like plausable scenes, but at a second glance everything is a little to perfect. The scenes hold no evidence of being lived in, photographs have no faces, products have no brand names, the world is not present and they become cold and eerie.

Short conversation with Michelle Allard.

Highlife 2007, Michelle Allard

Greenscape 2006, Michelle Allard

JM: Exploiting the emergent properties of a chosen material, its this approach to pushing these in-organic materials to "grow" in such organic manner as a process of making that I'm increasingly interested in.

MA: Very well put. The process of making alongside respecting a material's intrinsic and extrinsic properties, respecting those functional and conceptual frameworks. I also see in both of our works a merging of process of both the industrially or manmade and the organic. Change and accumulation are ever present.

JM: You seem to be drawn towards packaging materials when making work, the type of material that is formed and used to protect another object of "real worth" and then usually discarded or re-used for a similar job. Do you feel by using these materials to make artwork you are raising their status to something of a worthy object or is it more a case of the history of the material and how its nature of packing and stacking relates to this accumulative form of growth?

MA: I initially began using packing and related lightweight materials as both an elation or sublimation of such materials but also as a practical solution to wanting to explore form with little worry of storing and shipping. It was during artist residencies that I found was most exciting was just to show up with very little, and make more out of less, to suggest weight and mass while steering away from art historical materials.

ISHIHARA.

Jupiter Room (Sample), 2009

After the completion of Jupiter Room i was asked to exhibit some work in a group show called Ishihara. This is an exhibition set up by Jason Kerley and Adam Lewis-Jacob who graduated from the Arts Institute last year. This is the first time Ive heard of students sticking around and starting to make something happen in Bournemouth, rather than moving to somewhere where things are already rolling, so I was really keen on getting involved. I wanted to make a follow on peice of work from Jupiter Room which would incorporate unachieved elements from the show. The work is presented as a harvested 'sample' from the shop space, packaged and delivered to the gallery space and presented in far greater abundance suggesting the activity of further growth. To add to this idea of the work staying active a sound peice was added and played from within the structure. The sound was the fluctuating levels of a sort of white noise static that is produced when the lights are stacked loosely in a pile, moving slowly together to find a place of stability. This is something that I discovered from playing with the lights in the studio but was never realised within the shop space. I knew that Ishihara would be a hard place to exhibit any sort of sound peice, as with lots of people talking and music playing it would get drowned out. Because of the nature of the work this wasnt an issue, the sound wasnt obvious, more a discovery by being close to the structure or something searched for after reading the accompanying text. I enjoyed this.