Black Sculpture Maquette

Black Sculpture Maquette is an enigmatic form, part abstract and mechanical, part organic and skeletal. It began as a study for a large-scale sculpture, to be constructed from scorched Japanese cedar. While creating the maquette I liked the form of it, felt drawn in by the imagery it evoked for me – structural remnants of movement, like the parts left over from something that had once lived. And so it soon developed its own identity, evolving into a different and complex combination of forms as I added an accompanying smaller sculpture to it, rhythmic and quite closed in its form. I became intrigued by the connection between the two sculptural bodies, conceptually and in space. Between them I added UV tubes and running between and underneath the sculptural forms fine lines created by a fishing line element that forms a literal connection, echoing the relational tension that occurs visually through the physical and energetic field that they share. It becomes a living organism and is skeletal at the same time. By placing these elements in a vitrine - similar to a display cabinet in a museum - these forms, that feel somehow both familiar and strange, start to read as specimens for a case study; objects of scrutiny to be reflected upon and their meaning revealed, promising insights to be imparted from that which was once alive, now signifying remnants of what existed.

Constructed wooden elements painted in black oil paint put together to form two structures slightly elevated from the surface it rests upon. These placed in a large vitrine base. Between them a fishline element is placed on the surface of the vitrine underneath the two skeletal structures. UV lights placed between carefully upon the black structural elements, above the fishing line grid, within the table-like vitrine.