Found in Anne Marie's studio

Anne Marie actually pulled me along to her studio instead of bringing me an object, since she herself collects broken objects for her own art making, and thus had a wide range of possibilities to choose from.

This also, and many more interesting things.

It was a bit of a cheat maybe for me to go and pick some objects out myself, but since she works in a similar way to me it also gave us a good excuse to swap opinions, and for me to have a look at Flax studios which I had wanted to see anyway. These two pieces suggested themselves both in shape and in function, the cage being bottomless which meant the divers eye might come in handy.

The combination gave itself really.

The impression of the cage with the Cyclops’ eye was one of depression, but it lacked personality. I felt again that a protagonist was called for, to pull the suggested story along, and to further focus the attention of the viewer. The scruffy old bird is hanging on for what he is worth, fearing the fall to such an extent that he is missing the obvious opportunity of escape.

Clay and feathers, and a conscious lack of too much detail.

Object no. 20 & 21

This small vanity figure had been bought on a trip to Paris, but since then lost its head after falling off the mantle piece.

Always staring in the mirror does you no good.

Peter had bought it for his wife, but as it turned out, luckily for me, she actually likes skulls much better, so why he hadn’t bought something with the grim reaper instead I don’t know. At that point, however, I didn’t know of her preference for caputs, but a vanity loosing her head anyway suggested itself into a vanitas with a dead head. I added a small, real mirror so that she could continue looking at herself looking at herself. Whoever said Death is a man anyway, and old to boot? What proof do we have for that?

Who is looking at who?

Object no. 31

Bike seat for doll.

Celia handed in two toys, that were incidentally both intended to help transport dolls around. Funny that neither of them had stood up to the pressures of the average 6 year old girl playing. Which suggested that maybe girls don’t always play so calmly, and that they might therefore prefer something a bit tougher.

Bent and broken doll pram.

The solution was hidden in the shape of the bike seat. The pram with its wheels was so versatile it could have pulled me in any of a number of directions, but the bike seat was very limited. A limitation, however, can also mean that when you do find the correct answer, it fits so much better.

The shape of the bike seat couldn't really be converted to anything else.

I added a lot of parts to turn the bike seat and the pram into an arc weld for girls, but the shape of the welding mask was the crucial part. The weld itself is a LED torch, slightly re-jigged to push the LED out to the very front, and the blue plastic screen of course shields the very colour emitted by the LED. Celia very quickly got a grip on how to use it and off she went soldering imaginary pipes together.

Didn't need much explaining really.

Object no. 6 & 7

I know where he got it... in the Pound Store.

This redundant cheap Tv aerial was handed in by someone who himself works in TV, which made the object very suitable. It was a bit of a struggle turning it into something beautiful, so I focused instead on what possible functions one could imagine for a piece that didn’t any more serve its purpose as a communicator. I tied it in with what I imagine of the harsh, competitive world of media, and with the self assertiveness and make it or disappear kind of attitudes necessary to survive there. The device is meant to be used as a kind of self help gadget, you set the first antenna when you get up in the morning, aiming hopefully, for an ambitious target, and the second when you come home after work, maybe not always reaching up to the heights you had wanted. Compare the distance as a way of preparing for the next working day. To be used by freelancers instead of a boss.

Set it down on your nightside table, as a reminder that you can always be made redundant.

Object no. 35

Looking calm and reasonable.

He doesn’t look like he will be too much of a challenge, but since the legs tend to come off when ridden hard, he is actually rather tricky for a little rider. I wanted to bring that to attention, linking his outward appearance to his actual character. The broken timepiece I gave him for an eye had been handed in by the same owner, and to me it helped reflect the inner life frozen in an instant of madness and rage.

Now would you let your little one take a ride?

Object no. 33 & 36

Steampunk?

I was told the kettle leaks, and that made it all of course, together with the fact that it do look a bit like the turret of a submarine, or another archaic steam vessel. To make it sink I just cut its base off at an angle, producing a very simple illusion. But to add drama I also had to insert a protagonist in the piece. I felt it more powerful if the main character was rendered in his natural scale, which meant it had to be a small critter, with a bit of humour but also sympathy.

He shouldn't have to worry about sinking of course.

Object no. 37

Nifty little gadget

This clever little device had unfortunately stopped working properly. Collapsed together it had…used to be able to hold a candle flame in just the right position until it burned out, but now it all folded in on itself, extinguishing the flame as soon as you lit it. In the shape it reminded me of a Sputnik. Nice old tin can with various useful parts sticking out. I turned it into one, but also added a slowly blinking LED I tore from a pound store gizmo, and a confused Chimp, looking down on Earth below. I imagine the blinking light replacing the single candle, and the Chimp looking at us, replacing us looking out at space.

All the parts that were inside the lantern, now outside the sputnik.

Object no. 29

Too many hard serves.

I knew from Leander’s dad, that he is just in the process of applying to secondary school, which is when your performance in school really starts impacting on your future opportunities. Since the racket he handed in had clearly been handled too roughly, it made me think of the saying work hard – play hard. Leander himself is doing well in school without making too much fuss about it, but nonetheless he aimed for the best possible secondary school.

Still serving hard, but this time the ball suffers instead.

Competitiveness is so ingrained in us all, that we bring it with us also in our leisure activities, always trying to be best and to win. To give this stress some kind of body, I created a ball that has been struck so hard that it has melted into the racket, fusing itself with the net while sweating blood. Badminton is after all, a game where iron hard smashes should be alternated with feather light ripostes.

Stuck in the net.

Object no. 8

Fiona Ní Mhaoilir asked me to improve an artwork of hers, or two to be precise. She told me how she, completely spontaneously, had bought two lottery tickets in a news agents just because everyone else waiting in the line before her had done so. They had been duds of course, and resolved to get some kind of benefit out of them she glued them to canvases and turned them into paintings.

Didn’t win a million and didn’t sell for a million…

So, how do you repair someone else’s artwork? I decided to not continue along her premise, but rather to make it about her premise. Depressingly enough, whenever I meet other artists, the talk soon turns to money. Obviously since non of us has any, and we all try to think of these different schemes for getting money. I think we are acting out of a fallacy. Artists don’t make money because they figure out some clever or special way to make artworks, they make money because their gallerist or art dealer is well connected and knows how to present their work. And what do we artists know about money anyway? So why ask another artist for advice in financial matters? Marcel Mauss famously defined Magic as a social phenomenon that works because, and only if, the whole of the group agreed to act as if magic worked, which by the way also nicely describes money (as pointed out by several clever scholars), and also, in my opinion, to a very high degree the value ascribed to art works. I wanted to tie in to this notion of money as magic, because I think a lot of artists (myself included) easily fall victim to wishful (and even magical) thinking when it comes to financial success.

If I can’t have it…

I can’t bring myself to believe, however, that any kind of rituals or self affirmations can make you rich (as an artist, maybe it works for ad guys and car dealers, where at least there is some money floating around to start with), but maybe, since we are all experts at being poor, our real powers would lie in the ability to spread poverty and failure.

…no one else shall either.

Even if my magic can’t help Fiona become rich and successful, maybe at least it will allow her to share her misfortunes with others, deserving of it or not.

Object no. 30

Rob Ireson dropped by rather late in the show, handing in four objects, probably to up his odds at getting at least one of them turned into a sculpture despite my packed shelves and the short time left. They were all very mundane, which is perfectly al right, but still somewhat inspiring. One of them, a severely broken and battered but also already fixed bicycle rear light, was very ugly as an object but could produce blinking patterns in several beautiful series. The light pattern captivated me and I decided to make it the focus of a piece.

Fallen off the bike one too many times, Rob found it at the side of the road.

Taken on its own the object looks just like so many other cheap plastic consumables around us, but when you forget about the object and focus on the lights so many new possibilities open up. It immediately reminded me of a ship, with its long, slender shape (I am talking here of the pattern of lights), so in a way, the piece was already made.

Click the link below to see the sequence of lights.

Click for movie of distress call

Rob is attending the Art in Public programme at the Ulster University, so we ended up talking about the role of the artist in society, and the precarious position of culture in times of economical downturns. This was also on my mind when I put together this art object for him.

Object no. 26