Theme Weeks are operating around one specific topic, that we feel is relevant. Each week will start off with an interview with a protagonist of this topic and related posts will create a debate around the selected notion.
The sixth Theme Week is orientating around new techniques and aesthetics in contemporary sculpture. Sculpture carries a long tradition and can well be seen as one of the first mediums in fine art - be it cast iron or carved marble or wood. Away from traditional means of sculpting, artists keep on experimenting with materials and techniques. In recent years there has been a strong interest in Rapid Prototyping techniques within the arts community. Computer Aided Design (CAD) has enabled sculptors to explore new ways of creating three dimensional forms, freeing them from traditional methods of making objects and enabling them explore creative thought processes. A recent graduate and already successful contemporary sculptor, Eloise Hawser, starts the debate for this week with a discussion between her and Indechs.
To
begin with, could you please tell us a little bit about your practice.
My practice? I’m gnawing the
pencil, rearranging the desk, perspiring, perspiring, and at some point I
realise I need to be more relaxed, permeable even; things are very close at
hand; fey little office doodles, shop fronts, stickers I collected as child. In
flow of my work, they’re extracted ready-mades. There is another aspect, it
involves specialist processes and manufacturing techniques, searching these out
is like making a kind of pilgrimage. You end up on the periphery of cities, in
the bleaker of industrial estates, the companies around are called Velopex and
Proformer and they don’t care a bit about you.
When looking through
your portfolio, it is noticeable that your sculptures are made up out of a wide range of different materials. What role does materiality play?
A lot
of my work is very concerned with materials. Plastic, rubbers and other
composites are so abundant nowadays they have their own life cycles. I think
for example of the swathes of plastics and glass awash in the Pacific Trash
Vortex. There tends to be some visceral substance lurking in even the newest of machinery; 3D printers
run on a powder that looks a lot like sand, the new prototypes are a washed out,
bone-like brown.
In one of your
statements on your practice, you describe that your arrangements might seem to
be composed of found objects, yet you actually use rapid prototyping to
virtually render the objects. Could you, please shortly explain this rather new
technique in more detail to our readers.
The great
thing about rapid prototyping is it constructs 3D objects horizontally, through
thousands of flat layers. The objects are effectively born in these box-shaped
3D printers, which look more like scientific incubators. Like skyscrapers,
objects emerge into the void, slowly building upwards, with no mould or
negative. In the basin of a 3D
printer, an infinite number of pairings can be born in one object, like a head
and a filling system; there would be no graft and no seam.
How do you use this
technique in a two dimensional production or are you only using this for the
three dimensional objects?
On screen, the rendering visuals are beautiful, hypothetical. I use Turbo Squid—its a site where pre-rendered 3-D objects can be easily downloaded and manipulated. However, I've never used these in works themselves. The simplicity and ubiquity of such images present something like
the digital age equivalent of the “ready-made” except it could be a crumb or a
castle. However, I’ve never used these in works themselves.
Although laser cutting, 3D printing and cnc-ing are becoming more common, these tools are not only a financial burden but also hard to access. How are you going about it? (assuming you don’t have all of these machine in your studio)
Well
that’s a really good question – I’ve found the move to machining processes has
been both incredibly empowering and disempowering. Each project marks the
beginning of a long negotiation involving a circle of people with different
types of, specialisms, egos and interpretations. For example, a rendering produced
by a German architecture student might be made by a machine operator on the
edge of Letchworth Garden City. You have to adopt certain disguises.
Throughout your studies at
the Staedel School in Frankfurt, it can be assumed that you started off
sculpting in a more traditional manner by simply using your own hands. How and
why did you decide to include new media in your practice? What importance does
the new media have to your work?
Before
studying in Germany, my studio looked very busy, like a functioning ecosystem –
everything was handled and wrought. I was looking for a kind a material mimesis
but was never patient with my hands. Everything would break, a whole sculpture
would end up on the floor, a cracked‐up, sentimental mess.
Coming to
the Stadelschule changed everything. I felt like a Luddite alongside the
dematerialised, technocratic practices of my colleagues. I started to use CAD
drawing programs; on the screen I could mimic and replicate surfaces, treat
whole volumes casually. All of these processes took me away from the studio, so
I started to think about having to externalise an idea through software or explaining
it to another fabricator.
Having studied in the UK
and in Germany, are there and if so, to what extent do Universities and the
teaching method differ in both countries, especially with regards to such new
techniques?
In the UK
there was a very high awareness of how things were made and I don’t know if it
related to the craft history of Britain. This phrase “production values” was
constantly around. In Germany there was much less of an emphasis on this. It
was expected, precondition of the work, really just assigned to the meaning of
it. I remember my professor saying “well if it needs to be CNCed and it costs
this much, that’s what just you have to do”.
By virtually rendering
and then printing the objects, the artist’s touch is arguably missing. Have you
ever come across the question of authorship in your work? Is the conceptual or
rather the technical approach of greater relevance?
Art is the
one of the only areas where the question of authorship constantly arises; a car
designer’s touch isn’t missing, nor an architect’s. Nonetheless, using machines
does force you to externalise intentions much sooner and more precisely, the end result invariably embodies a collaborative process,
I enjoy that both technically and conceptually.
You are currently exhibiting
at the VI, VII Gallery in Oslo. Can you tell us more about the exhibition?
The works
have evolved from a larger piece of sculpture, a detached roller door, pulled
straight out of the high street. I had a kind of fantasy to turn it into a
crude metallic sea, the interlocking slats are wave- like and rhythmic. Then
there is a rosette helix pattern which is extracted from the profile of the
sculpture and re-articulated in several works, including silkscreen prints and
a textile work.
Thank you!
Thank you!
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