Human civilization is built on records. Most of the world’s most important records have been lost, due to the fragility and intense corruptibility of paper. Nowadays important records have backups, but over the course of the day we collect so much paper waste – receipts, bus tickets, to-do lists, notes, packaging. I began thinking about how wasted paper could become a sculptural work, through the folding or crumpling the material allows. When my friends got receipts I would ask for it, scrunch and roll it into a little ball, and hold it up in front of them – telling them I was going to do that a thousand times, pin them from floor to ceiling and exhibit it. They in return would laugh and tell me I wasn’t a ‘real artist’. I collected hundreds of pieces of paper and made some tests too, but the work didn’t receive much enthusiasm from anybody. A friend posted a photo online of a visit to Tate Modern, where Cruzvillegas had some works on show, and a modern-art-hating friend remarked – “I hate it, it’s not what I would call art, just a very bored person”. I believe that had I exhibited these scrunched papers that a lot of people would have said the same of my work.
Going back to Blue Curry’s works, for a while I would try to do something similar. I imagined that I could make towers from found objects and exhibit these. I collected larger and less dirty objects such as vases, crockery, glassware, pots, trophies from inside skips and made towers from them. My neighbours all got a note through the door asking for medium scale waste (like bottles and jars) that week - and this got me a few good objects.
Curry’s works always look sleek due to colour, shape and surface, and I was trying to make something similar, but they never looked quite right. I became frustrated by how makeshift mine looked, less polished than his. Despite receiving positive feedback from some peers when I asked them to write opinions next to images, one very honest friend told me that the whole idea seemed a bit lazy since there is no real craftsmanship besides finding the objects. In a discussion with a tutor it was suggested that I transform the objects by wrapping or casting them. Whilst I was dismissive at first, I realized that I would otherwise be making a second-rate version of Curry’s works, and I have always hated artists who completely recycle other artists’ ideas. At first I considered just painting the towers white, but I decided to cast them in plaster “to look like I’d done a bit more” (Luke remarked that this self-deprecating comment sounded rather Warhol.) Initially I planned to spray them bronze afterwards as a salute to old casting techniques, since mine would be a modern and cheap casting method.
The actual casting was made less daunting due to a lot of help from a sculpture tutor, since I ended up making my sculptures in the last week of workshops being available to students. I don’t know how readily I would tell anyone that, though, because the whole reason I cast the towers was to look like I has done more as an artist… if everyone knew I’d actually just had loads of help there might be more debate about who’s work it really is. Artists do receive a lot of technical help though – Damien Hirst didn’t cut those cows open with his bare hands and measure out how much formaldehyde he would need by hand, and more shockingly he doesn’t even paint most of his spot paintings but has a large team of assistants instead. So not only is the art that gets exhibited changing, but so is the way it’s made. In the future of art I don’t imagine technical skill will be as important as having original ideas, which may be executed by a skilled team.
Even with skilled help I encountered some problems. The first mod-roc cast became weakened by the plaster and warped; it needed to be broken to fit together. The second sculpture had a lot of air holes and snapped near the top whilst being transported, so I fixed it with PVA and painted some plaster over it. It is the weakest of the 3, and I exhibit it in the middle for balance. The third was made near the end of a bag of plaster, and stayed really soft.
Bear On A Bicycle: Thursday 28th June; Truck Store, Cowley Road, Oxford
It is free, and set to be amazing, so why would you miss out?
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