ARTWORK (sculpture) Ephemeral 2013

1. How does your sculpture project address Ephemeral?

Project outline

This project is a site specific ephemeral sculpture to be developed in clas and then realised on site in one day. Ephemeral sculpture is a very contemporary genre and offers a completely different experience to the learner, in regard to conceiving a work, and then actually going on site to create it in a given time frame.

Your work should have relevance to the site that gives emphasis to the concept and must be completed on that same day - yet to be determined.

my concept

Insignifigance

Human civilization is ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our mortality, which in turn acts as the emotional and intellectual response to our basic survival mechanism. Mankind creates or becomes part of something which they feels will last forever, compared to their physical body that will die one day. This gives mankind the illusion that their life has meaning, purpose and significance in the grand scheme of eternity.

The intention is to explore this through an ephemeral sculpture at Hasting Point

my execution

Hasting Point where open space of the beach , ocean and sky will encaptulate mankinds insignificance

huddled human figure made out of sand on a plinth .. intentionally to be destroyed by the tide

helplessness and inevitability of your demise and being lost in time

making use of the vastness on an out door environment ,the sea and sky ,to dwarf the figure to enhance its insignificance.

material/media: sand

techniques: modeling

scale: 1 life size figure

installation/format: 1 life size figure at the waters edge constructed at low tide

2. What research did you engage with ? Artist contemporary or traditional

what did I look at when brainstorming, research focus

initial focus of brainstorming was into my connection to the beach , I do beach walks almost every day , and my conclusion as to the main reason for them was self reflecting and humbling myself. To accept the eternal and strengthen my understanding .

This lead to the word Insignificance.

My research continued into the human condition in particular the Denial of death

Since I would be making this piece from sand I also researched sand art techniques.

images used for reference in construction of sculpture

pyroclastic flow casts of villager remains from pompeii

artist

Andy goldsworthy – Rivers and tides

Lauren Berkowitz

Nele Azevedo – Melting men

David Nash – wooden boulder

other inspiration came from the peach “Lift up your eyes” by pastor Kristy Godfrey and a reading by catherine lane regarding time as a line on the beach.

3. Discuss the planning of your project , including experimentation , technique selection, overcoming technical problems and determining limitations and constraints ( Refer to your journal)

experimentation

previous works which delt with the human form

life drawing classes

last years ephemeral sand sculpture

technique selection , why ?

Use of slightly wet, river sand : Sand grains will not stick together unless the sand is reasonably fine. While dry sand is loose, wet sand is adherent if the proper amounts of sand and water are used in the mixture. Good sculpture sand is somewhat dirty, having silt and clay that helps lock the irregular-shaped sand grains together.

technical problems

A collapse happened once I tried to refine the form as the sand started to dry out. Once re-wet I was able to reform the sculpture.

limitations and constraints

time played an important factor , the tide was going out so I only had 30minutes to complete the sculpture. If done again I would start earlier and chose a location which enhanced the “figure in isolation” as the chosen location had a great deal of rocks.

4. What aesthetic decisions did you make? Eg working with particular equipment to achieve particular effects, establishing a key , determining a palette and deciding upon a format and a scale

display

a figure in isolation on the beach , with its back to the ocean

placement – central location at hastings point near toilets and picnic area

scale – life size figure

surrounds – beach/open waterfront

The rational of location selection

• large open space
• early morning , beat the heat
• begin construction one hour before tide change
• river mouth – high grit content in the sand to improve moldability
• close to waters edge to reduce time for the tide to come in and consume it and to provide a water table that I could easily access by digging a hole next to the sculpture

I needed a location which had an open sea backdrop ( for photographs ) , photograph location needed to be shaded , preferably with a chair and somewhere to setup the tripod for my camera since I would be taking timelapse shots.

Positioning of the body

I chose to have the figure huddled and covering its face

• denial

this was for both structural , for example a standing figure with this material would be near impossible

5. How has your experimentation and development of selected techniques informed the project ?

Research and previous experimentation with sand aided in the hastly construction of the figure as did my previous construction of human form sculptures to aid in proportions anatomy.

6. How could you further develop your techniques in relation to you professional practice ? How might you build upon your ideas towards future work ?

This project has opened up many posibilities for the future which I hadnt considered.

Due to my experimentations into cross disipline works of 2D and 3D I am giving serious considerations to exploring ephemeral works in painting and drawing .