This term, for the first time, there has been no brief. We have been free to follow our own interests. Again, I've referenced the Minimalists. Their work attracts me. Their use of geometric abstraction and hard edges challenges me to simplify my work. I want to keep taking away, until I feel nothing more can be removed, yet still have the work make sense. I also like a quote by the American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, who said, "to use no ornament that did not come out of the nature of the materials". For most of my work this year this has been a guiding principle.
I'm an early riser and love watching the sun come up. Over the years I've made many photographs of weather patterns, clouds, sunrises and sunsets. For this project I wanted to abstract the view of the sunrise from our home. How to do this, while referencing the Minimalists and heeding Frank Lloyd Wright? I settled on Perspex, an industrial material often used in signage, (and, among many other things, intraocular lenses, used in cataract surgery which I thought was interesting because I have two of them) and found some amazing pink fluorescent Perspex with highlighter orange glowing edges which would work and also a dark blue. I hoped the pink would throw a magenta cast on the walls, but testing it with a 100 x 70mm sample wasn't simple. I looked at the perspex work of Rana Begum, (you can see her work on Instagram at @ranabegumstudio) and Regine Schurmann, which was really helpful. Olafur Eliasson makes incredible, large, fit in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall sized installations about environment and weather. His The Weather Project was a huge, immersive experience.
I used the cube form as a starting point to make a work 1200 x 400 x 200 mm with stacked multiples of a
100mm cube. The Perspex provided the colour and the light source is LED lights. The magenta/pink Perspex of the top and bottom layers throws the colour onto the wall behind, and with the blue front facing Perspex I hope a viewer can feel the beauty I feel each time I see a sunrise.
I'm an early riser and love watching the sun come up. Over the years I've made many photographs of weather patterns, clouds, sunrises and sunsets. For this project I wanted to abstract the view of the sunrise from our home. How to do this, while referencing the Minimalists and heeding Frank Lloyd Wright? I settled on Perspex, an industrial material often used in signage, (and, among many other things, intraocular lenses, used in cataract surgery which I thought was interesting because I have two of them) and found some amazing pink fluorescent Perspex with highlighter orange glowing edges which would work and also a dark blue. I hoped the pink would throw a magenta cast on the walls, but testing it with a 100 x 70mm sample wasn't simple. I looked at the perspex work of Rana Begum, (you can see her work on Instagram at @ranabegumstudio) and Regine Schurmann, which was really helpful. Olafur Eliasson makes incredible, large, fit in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall sized installations about environment and weather. His The Weather Project was a huge, immersive experience.
I used the cube form as a starting point to make a work 1200 x 400 x 200 mm with stacked multiples of a
100mm cube. The Perspex provided the colour and the light source is LED lights. The magenta/pink Perspex of the top and bottom layers throws the colour onto the wall behind, and with the blue front facing Perspex I hope a viewer can feel the beauty I feel each time I see a sunrise.