When I worked on the Foundation Course at Leeds College of Art or the Jacob Kramer College as it was then, one of the most useful three dimensional sessions was one whereby we set up a situation that forced a joined synthesis of different constructional materials followed by an exploration their environmental structural possibilities.
In order to do this we needed two things to be in place. The studio had to already be enlivened with a range of good sized 3D objects and we needed large amounts of materials that could be explored using multiples of units that had an ability to be extended across a surface by some sort of duplication. For instance, tape can be cut into equal lengths and stuck to something else. If enough pieces of tape are cut and a process developed to do the same thing over and over again, the tape will eventually be seen as having a structural potential. A thousand pieces of tape 2 inches long, each one attached to the bottom half of a matchstick, can then be joined to another thousand pieces of tape each one attached to the bottom half of a lollypop stick. A flowing, but unique looking surface may then arise that has come into being by careful crafting and thinking about the consequences of the join.
We often used matchsticks, lollypop sticks and tape because it was reasonably easy to obtain large multiples of these, but we also used office supplies, (paperclips, post it notes, luggage ties, balls of string, postcards, different types of fasteners, sellotape, plastic ties, hole punches, staplers, drawing pins, wire) and anything else that students might have access to, for instance one student who had a contact in the market one year acquired hundreds of empty egg boxes and moulded paper mache trays for carrying fruit, others had contacts in various engineering works and could get piles of offcuts, all of which had to be the same, some students somehow managed to get bags full of bottle tops, or buttons. However no matter what the material was, it needed to be of enough quantity to make a significant visual presence when joined with something else and extended over a large surface area.
At the time (1980s) the work of the Ghanian sculptor El Anatsui was unknown to us, but his working method of using vast amounts of wire and bottle tops would have been a perfect example to give to students as to how this sort of research could lead to powerful work in its own right.
El Anatsui: Details of surfaces
Part one of a session was to explore whatever materials you had been given. Usually two types of materials were provided, as well as access to basic hand tools, such as pliers, scissors, hammers, saws, craft knives, bradawls, hole punches, hand drills etc. First of all you had to explore possibilities of a single material being able to be joined to itself. For instance string could be cut into lengths and knots then used to tie itself together. Tape might be stuck to tape, a lollypop stick split and another one inserted into the split, or two splits could be spliced together. Then the other material was to be explored, the test being could this material be extended to cover a surface? The next phase was what happened when you brought your two materials together? Could a more complex and robust joining system be invented? In the case of the El Anatsui examples above, wire and small metal units such as bottle tops or metal labels, have holes punched into them and wire is used as the joining material.
Students were then put into pairs and again the materials were tested out, now they had four material possibilities and they had to work out which combination worked most effectively to produce a robust surface, one that could be extended indefinitely and that was aesthetically interesting. Once this had been accomplished, these pairs of students had to work as if they were on a factory production line and they had to produce enough components in order to produce a material that could cover a minimum of a two metre square.
Students were then asked to team up with another pair, they were given space in the studio that included at least one large object that had already been made, as well as floor and wall space. They were asked to use their building skills to cover wall, floor and object, one pair having a starting point on the left the other on the right, or one pair beginning above the other, for instance one would begin by attaching their growing surface to a wall and the other the floor. As they advanced this surface it had to be able to integrate the given object and as one way of working began to meet another, be capable of gradually synthesising and accommodating the materials and aesthetic of the met material and structuring process. So for instance, one pair of students might be making a surface not unlike the one El Anatsui had invented by linking bottle tops with wire and another two students might have developed a surface made of drawing pins pushed into a surface of electrical tape. Perhaps something like the surface developed by Jan Fabre below.
Jan Fabre
Because students were working with a wide variety of materials, these surfaces evolved in interesting ways and particularly so as they began to merge into each other. However the other issue was how objects, walls and floors began to become transformed. As you can see from the Jan Fabre example above, what could have been a very ordinary sculpture of a boy, is made into something totally different by being covered in a surface made of drawing pins and if the floor and or walls were also included, the transformation could be even more powerful.
Jan Fabre
Jan Fabre is an artist who also works in the theatre and so is very aware of the theatrical transformational potential of surfaces, in the case above he uses the shed wing cases of iridescent beetles to transform a wheelchair into an object of mystery.
At the point when we developed these sessions students were still in the first few weeks of the course and we usually asked students to make large items, such as giant vegetables, or household tools during the summer break, which were brought into the studios in the first week and used as subject matter from which to make drawings. Now these objects would become totally transformed and not only that, they would have a totally different relationship between the floors and walls of the studio. As these surfaces were built, students had to decide where and how they ended. Did they for instance stop exactly halfway across an object? Did they stop at a perfectly drawn curved edge, or at a straight line or did they have a very ragged, dispersed edge quality? Finally all the detritus and tools would be cleared from the studio and we would critique the work as if it was a contemporary sculpture exhibition.
Various variations of this approach were made over different years, we tried to never exactly repeat what we had done the year before, as it quickly became predictable. But the basic issues of jointing, surface development, formal transformation and material specificity were always in the mix, as well as team work and the need at some point within the process to have to manufacture enough material to ensure that a perceived physical change would happen, because enough of a surface had been produced to effect change.
Some of the surfaces made were fantastic and the work done in those days was powerful and the lessons learnt were deep ones. However I never took photographs and I don't know who did, as these were the days before the mobile phone and it felt as if it was in the doing and not the recording that lessons were learnt. A situation that would not happen now, as it often feels that everything depends on having a good image to send out to social media sites.
An installation by Croatian design collective use/numen
The implications for the work done by foundation students undertaking the project often led to installations not too dissimilar to the one above, which uses rolls and rolls of sellotape to develop a material that once it becomes structural, takes on a life far beyond its use to stick two pieces of paper together.
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