Intricate mechanics.

Elaine Allison gave me a part of an old typewriter that had been left over after she had made artworks out of the rest of it, and of some other typewriters too. The idea of transforming a typewriter into art was obviously not new to Elaine, but maybe I could still do something unexpected with it. My idea was to untangle some of the very intricate and complicated mechanical relationships hidden in just this small part of a typewriter. After cleaning the parts we strung them up a bit after how they had previously hung together in causal chains.

It all hangs together.

The new composition is clear and open, but doesn’t really reveal the mechanics any more. We decided to paint some of the parts to further alienate them from their previous roles as useful cogs in a larger system.

Signed and dated, and hung on a wall.

Some claim that an object becomes an artwork when an artist signs it as one. Another theory is that an artwork is anything an artist manages to convince someone to pay a lot of money for. In the case of this sculpture the signature is there, but the sale is not, so I guess I will have to leave the question open.

Randomness and order.

The title is not there to explain an artwork, it is there to open up further possible readings. When I named this one I was thinking of how if an endless number of chimps typed away at typewriters for an infinite amount of time, one of them would inevitably produce Shakespeare’s Collected Works, an analogy most modern western youths are told as if this would help them understand the concept of infinity, but mostly made them think about what wonderful things some of the other chimps came up with.

Object no. 10

One out of three cafetieres that got handed in to the repair shop...which says something about the quality of these things maybe?

The first object that got handed in to the repair shop was also very typical of the things we would get in the coming four weeks. We were offered a total of three cafetières, all with missing glass containers, which indicates their weak point I think. This didn’t matter at the time of course, since it was the first object and without the whole month to compare with a very unique piece to start with. Peter Lewis Ross who handed it in was really there to do a radio piece for BBC Scotland, but of course he also wanted his own sculpture. What I did was more a response to his job and maybe his personality than so much to the cafetière.

A powerful brew.

Since Peter expressed an anticipation of something quite fantastic emerging from the broken everyday object he gave me, I tried of course to not disappoint him, by imagining something grand, spectacular and surprising.

Can nuclear weapons ever become kitsch?

Choosing ceramics as a material with a lot of associations to craft, and loose figuration as the kitschy way of making art, I took on an impossible subject matter. A nuclear mushroom cloud, for your kitchen. My hope was that it would also actually function as a coffee pot, which I believe it would only that washing it after use would be almost impossible. But a nuclear explosion is also almost impossible to wash away.

Not really dishwasher safe.

Nuclear terror fascinates me as a kind of horror scenario we have gotten so used to, and bored of, that it doesn’t scare us any more. Why really are we more afraid of terrorists that could at the very worst kill as many of us as a small fraction of the yearly death toll on our roads, than of the thousands of nuclear weapons still waiting out there for a politician stupid enough to push the famous button? Have we started trusting politicians? Or is our fear of a specific phenomenon simply proportional to how much media reminds us to be afraid of it? Something for a journalist to think about.

Object no. 1

Cute... or sinister?

The hand carved wooden elephants we got from Liz Armitage were your typical gift shop inhabitants, either in a zoo or park of some kind, or brought home from a trip abroad of course. They had been a present, but although surely well intended, she never took to them. -They are ugly, and their eyes are scary! she claimed, and after a quick inspection I had to give her right. Could it be that the loveless conditions under which they had been carved, in some third world craft industry aimed at tourists, had infused itself into the core of the creatures created there? Anyway, they were justly deemed too creepy for the bookshelf. But instead of trying to erase the elephants unwholesome attitudes, I decided to run with it.

A definite improvement of the creepy eyes.

Making a small sculpture that is genuinely unsettling is actually really difficult, so when you happen to run into one where half the job has already been done, surely you would only want to enhance it. I figured if I transformed the figure from representing an animal beloved and sought out by tourists in the tropics, into one westerners going south mostly try to avoid, I might be on the right track.

Is it the name of a large spider, or an eight legged elephant?

I wanted to keep as much of the hand carved aesthetic as possible, so I just cut the spider body out of the elephant, and then added three extra pairs of legs. The symbolical implications of an elephant spider are interesting for me. Think of the renowned memory of the elephant, his size and majesty, and how they live to very old age. And then the shadow existence of spiders, hiding out in nooks and crannies, staying out of plain view, waiting patiently for its prey, ubiquitous to any environment, always hiding in some shadow of human habitation. Sounds a bit like guilt maybe, or family secrets.

What's the secret of the Elephant Spider?

As a sculpture it is also interesting. Is a carving like this a representation of an imaginary animal, or of tourist handicraft? Or is it a symbolical representation of a power relationship or economical force that were behind the creation of the carving in the first place? I think it can inhabit several of these positions at the same time, but I also think that a figurative sculpture like this points at the complex of an art world sometimes uncomfortable with simple figuration, in a world full of non artistic figurative sculpture and imagery, in toys, media and advertising.

If you catch her scuttling over your bathroom floor at night, maybe a rolled up newspaper won't be enough?

Object no. 24

Stacked up normality.

The brief for the Steffi family was to warp it’s annoying normality. Sally Andrews, an art student of the ECA, had bought it with the intention of making an artwork that, if I understood it correctly, challenged the normative family values projected by the doll kit. The way I interpreted our discussion, Sally was mostly annoyed with the hetero normative message propagated by the Steffi’s, but the whole idea of the perfect American middle class family got me thinking, and I decided I was more interested in the class side of the American norm. So, in my interpretation, the Steffi family are victims of one of the 3.2 million foreclosures in the States last year. They are all ready and willing to work, not on drugs, or disabled, or even war veterans with post traumatic stress syndromes, just very normal, blond, fit and average people who lost their job in the crisis, then their home, and that now are moving (at least trying to) West, for better opportunities.

You would pick them up, wouldn't you?

Object no. 63

We think...it's for carrying something delicate.

We don’t really know what this box is, who made it or why. Ms Johnson, who had picked it up at a flea market in Canada, thought it might have been a home-made instrument box. It could well be. The outer shell of the old and battered suitcase is made of tin and was obviously bought be someone who then fitted it with a wooden panelling in a style you would expect to find in a seventies bathroom. After a bit of thinking and tinkering we decided that the panelling was also lined with Styrofoam insulation, to keep the contents of the suitcase warm and cozy.

The trick is to keep the mouse occupied while traveling.

The reason this object was difficult to re-fit into an art object, is that it has already been remade from its original form. When someone sees my final sculpture, they will most likely assume that I also installed the wooden panelling, why not, given it’s such an odd addition. My response to this presumed assumption was to attach an invented story to the suitcase, that would both answer the initial question of what the wooden panelling was for, but also add several new layers of open ended questions.

A good instruction should always add more question marks than it adresses.

When an artwork is functional, I prefer it if the aesthetic choices are kept simple, and the perceived or real functionality of the object is made to carry both the obvious narrative of the piece, as well as a number of implied layers. That way, when someone engages with the object, they first think aha, so that’s what it’s for, but then also start trying to pick apart a number of mysteries and oddities that are implied given the up-front purpose of the artwork combined with how it would actually perform, and most importantly, what kind of world we would be living in if the object was actually a real and not an imaginary construct.

Object no. 34

Gorgeous textures of old buoys and floats.

When Susan Colvin came by with a bunch of old fishing floats she had found on the shores of the west coast of Scotland, I knew I was in trouble. The texture and colours of these old cork and steel bits was simply stunning. What to do that doesn’t ruin it? The danger with really beautiful materials however, in my opinion, is that one tends to just want to display them “as is”, without altering them. This can be fine, and surely very attractive, but for me it doesn’t make interesting art. What I always come back to, is that I want art to alter our perspective of the world, make us see things in a new way.

Using the materials to their best potential.

Back to the floats though. For The Temporary Art Repair Shop at least, I try to take the functionality (intended, actual or lacking) of the materials into account when making the piece, so clearly here I would have to work with floatation of some kind. I had all these crazy ideas of upside down sculptures floating just under the surface of the water, held up by the cork, but that would have used the cork only as a support. Finally, when in a Pound Store to pick up extras for some other sculptures, I just happened to see this little rubber duck, and then it all came together.

Three is the magic number.

So, ducks for the high seas it was. With the excellent help from one of the stone carving students at the ESW, I managed to shape the cork into ducks, and the old steel buoy then obviously became a globe. I often find, that once I take the first associative step, the rest just follows automatically. So given that the ducks would be dragging a globe behind them, I obviously named them Santa Maria, Pinta and Santa Clara, and painted a pre Columbus world map on the globe. I think they could be seaworthy, and dropped at the right spot at the right time, the currents should drag them to America, but I’m not sure if whoever found them would appreciate the suggestion of a world without the New World.

Signed and also with the assistants' names.

Object no. 26

Old and battered but still running.

I think Hans Clausen was a wee bit cheeky when he handed in this pretty little toy truck. Apart from the worn out paint it is still in good working order, and I have a feeling he is quite attached to it, but since he wanted to take part in the project he had to find some faults with it. More than the paint job, he also found the lacking safety of the truck a cause for concern. No safety belts etc. OK, so maybe he wasn’t really that bothered about the safety aspect of the toy, but since I had a  bit of a culture chock with the whole health and safety paranoia sweeping Britain since I lived here a few years ago, I decided to make that the theme for this piece.

Nice new paint job, all in Bauhaus style basic colors.

Every time I see a sign telling me not to do something, I can’t help but read it also like telling me to do it. -Don’t cross this line! implies that there should be some pretty good reasons for me wanting to cross it.

Text art with a hand made touch.

Most text art uses a non hand made finish. Maybe because most text based artists don’t really like to use their hands that much. I love to use my hands, and I also often find a place for text on my sculptures, so I solve that with careful thin brush strokes.

What is the cultural significance of a skip hire truck?

So many of the basic objects surrounding us in our everyday are covered with texts warning us for something or telling us what to do. Someone said that the average westerner today produces more text in their lives than the entire world before Christ. I don’t know how true that is, but counting emails and texts it could be I guess. But the texts surrounding us on objects and walls still mostly have two very basic messages – Don’t do that! or Buy that!

Always sign and date. The magic of text on all artworks.

Object no. 27

Dump truck that lost its head.

It is always hard to make art for kids. The kind of interventions I make often rely on a kind of humour, or at least on visual and associative games, that are very grown up. When people come in with their small kids, and hand in broken toys, I stand in the conundrum of either fixing the toy so that the kid likes it, or turning it into a kind of artistic intervention that the parents can appreciate, and other grown ups. What I have been trying to do here, is to fix the toys to the children’s liking, but adding a difference in style or function that wouldn’t be found in other toys. I have been trying to create a subtle and gentle intervention in how toys are usually presented to kids, but with the main goal of keeping it interesting for the kids themselves.

Fit and ready for dumping!

In this case I had to replace the lost cabin, which I did with a bit of nicely varnished hardwood from an electric guitar I had cannibalized. But I also had to add a new dimension or characteristic to the way this toy could be used for play. I made very simple alteration. Taking my que from the function of the dump truck, – to dump, I just boosted its capacity for dumping things. I imagine that what a small boy does with a dump truck is mostly filling it up with stuff, then rolling it a bit before dumping out the contents (a Freudian toy if ever there was one!)

Dumping forcefully!

I spring loaded the bed so that it catapults its load when the head is tilted slightly forward. This adds just a little bit of action and is just a tad too much for a normal toy, still without becoming useless or potentially offensive for the kids or the parents. This is a tricky balance to thread, but I hope I have managed here, maybe erring on the side of boredom rather than subversion.

Spring action visible.

And the obligatory disclaimer. I admit I wouldn’t have added this in another country than the UK (or if I had been in the States of course) but keeping your back clear is such an integrated part of UK culture by now that I can’t sidestep it just because I come from somewhere else. The text is a reminder to the parents that something has been done to the toy, and that they should themselves have a look and a think and decide if it is still a suitable toy, or if it should rather go in a drawer for future collecting.

Object no. 11

A broken cup.

Pottery shards are really extremely interesting objects. Most of human history before writing first appeared is dated and ordered using finds of broken everyday crockery. Fired clay vessels have the combined characteristics of at the one hand being extremely durable to erosion, and on the other hand being brittle and easily breakable. This means that pots and mugs were made in great numbers since they often broke within a few years, and then thrown away in rubbish heaps where they have lasted almost unaltered through the millennia. Very handy for archaeologists.

Very simple abstract sculpture.

Taking this durability into account, I wanted to make a piece that records something for the future. The very simple shapes of the broken shards also inspired me, but of something much bigger. Standing there spread out on a flat surface, they reminded me somehow of icebergs adrift in the ocean. Since these will probably soon be as rare as the Dodo and the Tasmanian Tiger, I figured it worth trying to capture something of the silent grace of these floating giants for our descendants. Since Jana Middleton, who handed it in, is an artist herself, I played with a minimal approach, of just changing the surface texture and then tilting the shards a bit so as to look more adrift, which nonetheless required a substantial amount of work, given how durable and resistant ceramics are.

Object no. 19

Nice? music box...

Kay Sheridan really wasn’t that pleased with the little dinosaur music box that she had bought at Muji’s on her last visit to London. Thinking it was a pop-up toy, the ones you can make stand up or fall over by pressing a button under the box, she hadn’t expected it to play any music at all, and certainly not “Land of hope and glory”. And it has to be admitted, the rendition coming out of the box when the dinosaur was “pulled up with his roots” so to speak, also wasn’t very impressive.

No hope for the dinosaurs.

My response to her music box, since she didn’t like the dinosaur, and really didn’t like the tune either, was to kill them both. Instead of setting off the tune when pulled up from the ground, the dinosaur now fiddles along every time he is raised up in the hangman’s noose. Also, the tune I have damaged as much as I could, while still making sure it’s recognizable. I did this by grinding away some of the pegs in the music box, causing it to loose its notes in a John Cagey kind of way. I kept the sculptural language in tune with the original object since I find mass-produced wooden toys such a funny anachronism – more genuine than plastic, but more simulacrum than home made craft projects. Maybe Muji could also pick up on the design and start producing a hangman’ musical box, I wouldn’t mind. By the way, I really wonder how they select their music, and what “Land of Hope and Glory” has to do with dinosaurs in the first place?

Object no. 15