Tourist at Left Bank

Well, the day of exhibiting my work has come. After four weeks of horse-shit discovery and bakin’ molds, I had one last intense day in the metal shop yesterday heat-bending and welding the steel stands together, and now the molds are elevated and set for show at the Left Bank Gallery in Tarland. This is a neat little gallery situated in an old bank, run by Sera Irvine. The space is large enough for four of my elevated molds, with another mini one in the entrance area... or that’s what I’ve planned so far, as long as they make the half-hour journey intact. It’ll be a careful drive!

I’ve also marked out Left Bank Gallery’s footprint onto the floor of the Communities Room, and began to lay out the work in the space. What I began to realise was there are real contrasts between exposed and concealed spaces in the work. I had decided to make a stand for one of the fragments that had fallen away from the manhole cover mold (not a title, just for reference). This is to be placed a short distance from the main mold, and appears as if it were an exploded diagram. The view of its now exposed interior represents to me a kind of miniature amphitheatre or an underground conduit. This revealing contrasts with the darkened and secret interior of the heart mold, whose interior darkness and elevated height give little away.

 The piece that got its own stand!

Stepped interior of mold, seen through the gap left by the piece above.

I’ve begun to to reflect on the past four weeks, and have tried to ascertain what I have learnt. Some of these are things like: put more clay into the mix in future, as some molds have come out of the kiln fragile and crumbly (or maybe I had been making apple crumble all along?!); projects like this are great experiences in testing new territory with unfamiliar materials, so as not to become complacent with your own practice; Eden has probably over twenty different personalities (pool of technicians); all four seasons can be represented in one day in Lumsden; when walking in the countryside there’ll always be a dead animal when you least expect it.

So, soon I’ll be heading off back to sunny Glasgow, GSS, and a new project, this time helping to film Deniz’s new video work at a local windfarm, with a menagerie of props and willing assistants! I’m looking forward to it, but in the meantime, the show.

http://leftbankgallery.wordpress.com/