Replication and Manipulation
Throughout history and in every culture, nature has played a vital role in creative expression. We have strived to not only capture its movement, form, growth and materials but have used this as a starting point and inspiration to develop and ‘improve’ on it. I am particularly interested in how these forms have been replicated, distorted and developed by us in sculpture, architecture and the environments we create. Designer Thomas Heatherwick creates bridges and other designs following these prinicipes.
With this in mind I was keen to explore the mathematical patterns and diagrams used to explain sacred geometry which occur so often in nature. I am also interested in exploring further the idea of taking one of nature’s patterns or systems and manipulating it to distort and bring a human chaos in the imperfections of my replication. I wanted to see if I could produce something visually interesting by breaking some of these rules and following others of my own making.
Vegetable or Mineral?
Intrigued by the simplicity in the golden spiral – a set of proportion rules that denotes beauty found in nature and often adopted by artist and designers - My aim with this work was to be inspired by this proportion, the spiral form and the geometry but to bring chaos and disorder. I found this in a type of broccoli called a Romanesque and was inspired by the scale of Angus Dene’s land art piece Tree Mountain, in which 11,000 trees were planted on a mountain in a mathematical pattern similar to that of the Romanesque broccoli. She talks of a true alliance between man and nature. The trees are made by nature and the mathematical pattern in which they were planted was discovered through the human intellect. I have always been fascinated by the fractal and other worldly form of this type of vegetable and was interested to see if I could incorporate it into one of my artworks.
The geometric forms and blocks that I built around the vegetable served to mirror the fractals but these were manmade, imperfect and distorted. The work can be read in a number of ways depending on which lens of nature we decided to use. It could be looked at with the binary view of human made vs natural - The broccoli appearing to erupt from a chaos of human made forms, implying the Gaia theory that nature will always survive and thrive despite us. Or it could be seen as one structure, formed from a volcanic eruption or coral growth with the otherworldly appearance often seen in organic forms beneath the waves. A relic dug up from the sea bed.
With this idea of high quality and permanence I decided to create an artwork in bronze. It was predictability hard work and time consuming, which seemed appropriate for the permanent of the object being created and casting something that would normally decay such as a vegetable seemed appropriate. Sustainability within my practice is important to me and vital to the issues that I am exploring such as climate change and the natural world. It is a struggle that I face in relation to creating work and I am battling with the sustainability of continuously making work and using up materials. I am therefore seeing this bronze work as something with longevity and to be considered as a previous relic.
Disrupted order
Continuing with the use of the Romanesque Broccoli as a starting point I wanted to create an object that could be multiplied in different materials as an exercise in making but also to create a series of pieces that when placed together would be reminiscent natures multiples such as a field of crops or a sea bed of corals. As it was a relatively small piece the use of multiples would emphasise the form and in the process of casting, the repletion of exact replicas, talk of geo crops and mass farming - our obsession with mass producing and perfection.
Helen Chadwick’s piece Piss Flowers, uses this method of multiples – casts from melted snow that has been urinated in by herself and her husband. This is an example of how multiples, seemingly abstract sculptures, can be displayed to denote a landscape. Other artist that have inspired me with their replicationa nd manipulation of nature are Nina Katchadourian and Olga Ziemsha.
Animal or Vegetable?
This piece was an experiment into casting the insides of fruit and vegetable shells. This cast was taken from the inside of a passionfruit and used a cold metal casting method. The resulting sculpture has a bodily quality to it reminiscing of a human belly button and the folds and wrinkles give it an otherworldly, almost alien appearance. I am interested in the distortion of working with familiar objects and replication and manipulation them into new objects that have a faint hint of the original but offer a new perspective and unfamiliarity and curiosity to the viewer.
Pink Mist
I had finished my first year of the MFA exploring clusters of geometric shapes and was keen to continue with this over the summer holidays. I wanted to experiment with combining organic forms with geometric shapes that I have made and then flocked with bright pink fibres.
The starting point for me was the discovery of a fallen branch which had dried and spit along its length leaving crevasses of differing sizes and depths. I wanted to play with these ‘pockets’ in the branch by flocking the inside of them and embedding my flocked shapes. This gave the impression of cuts within the surface and the geometric shapes appearing to grow from within. I wanted to reference moss and other similar parasitical relationships found in the natural world between two separate forms. Much like the work of Giuseppe Penone, I was keen to create work that takes a familiar and organic material like a fallen tree trunk but distorts it in an unfamiliar way creating something surreal and unfamiliar.
I was pleased with the contrast between the dried pale browns of the wood and the bright pink from the embedded shapes which helped to emphasis the organic against the non-organic and this became even more evident when placed in the Lewisham Art House gallery setting where it wa sbeing exhibited.
After the exhibition finished I decided to return the piece to Epping Forest. This was partly to do with a lack of storage space but also because I wanted to see what the piece would look like back into its natural surroundings in comparison to the white space of a gallery. I also wanted to document nature reclaiming the work over time.
Unfortunately this wasn’t possible as when I returned a month later the work had been removed. This idea of the legacy or after-life of an artwork is something that is becoming more prevalent in my practice and is currently a cause for contemplation and unease as explored through my series of works exploring waste.
Influential Artists
Thomas Heatherwick
Thomas Heatherwick also creates work within the public realm and they call themselves a design studio rather than artists, creating anything from London buses to bridges, sculptures and buildings.
Their designs primarily are inspired by nature which in my view is why they create work that sits so well within its environmental and are so pleasing to the eye.
Nina Katchadourian
Nina Katchadourian is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes video, performance, sound, sculpture, photography and public projects. Her work deals with the systematic reordering of natural processes and she often approaches this with humor and irony.
I can relate these elements of her work to my own practice and I was particularly interested in her body of work called ‘Uninvited collaborations with nature’ in which she mends spider webs, patches up tears on mushrooms and attached fake braches to trees with autumnal leaves on them.
Olga Ziemsha
Olga Ziemsha creates sculptures and installations within the public realm. She uses natural material to create her sculptures and focuses on synthesizing aspects of humanity with the natural world, which is an area that I am particularly interested in.
Giuseppe Penone
He often uses trees within his work which is obviously relevant to my current work but in all his work the material is central and makes the visual and tactile qualities of it central and key to the final outcome.
I am interested in the way his manipulation the material to bring out qualities that would perhaps go unnoticed.
Areas of Research
Sacred Geometry
Scared Geometry is concerned with the geometry and mathematical ratios, harmonics and proportion that are repeatedly found within nature, music and the cosmos. One prime example of this is the golden ratio which many artists and designers, Le Corbusier, Dali and Michelangelo, to name a few, have used to proportion their work. This ratio spiral also often appears in nature from fern leaves to shells and even to the spiral of a storm cloud and the swirl of a milky way in outer space.
I am interested in these mathematical patterns and rules that exist in nature and how we have adopted them and analysed them, often coming to the conclusion of some higher god like power creating them. The results being that these proportions and patterns have often been adopted for sacred spaces and religious iconology.