Maturity Sculpture

Artists Statement. (September 2013) My practice is sculptural mainly, however I have created a few installations. My MA piece, "hortus aviae" is one such example. The inspiration for this piece came after hearing and reading so many stories in the news about how video games are becoming so realistic, and how they encourage younger generations to become blinkered to the real world and how its affecting their development, both mentally and physically. My idea for this piece was to recreate something completely natural (although arranged by man) from something obviously synthetic and man made. My hope was that the piece would draw attention back to things with natural beauty. "hortus aviae" translated from latin means Grandma's garden, and like the name suggests it is an adaptation of my own Grandma's garden. Created from photographs taken in her garden, the plants and flowers have been laser cut into acrylic. As an artist I enjoy exploring the juxtaposition between a piece's material and its subject. Part of this includes challenging peoples predisposed assumptions as to which materials are used or are suitable for being used in certain ways. Fake flowers are usually made from materials that simulate the petal, for example, thin, fragile materials; For my piece "Ring a Rose of Roses" I have chosen to use more robust materials such as steel, coloured wool and EVA foam, traditionally used in childs play. My work also has a playful aspect to it. I like to play with scale sometimes to add a humourous element to the work, For example for my BA final piece I created a giant yellow jigsaw puzzle, which I followed up with a enlarged paper descision maker (a paper folded toy with 4 colours on the four peaks and inside had numbers, under which were phrases) I chose not to explore scale in my most recent work, as I was changing the materials and inverting the garden. I did this to change the viewers perpective of the garden, I suppose for a similar reason, as to why I changed the materials: to add an aspect of surprise into my work. A garden, you'd expect to see from above, with the plants coming from the ground; to change this and have everything above the viewers head, adds a bit of excitement and I hope, makes the viewer consider the content in a little more depth.