This old lampshade had been used in an installation in PSsquared, three years ago, to create a living room where an artist hung out for the duration of the show. It was handed in by the gallery, and like most stuff that had spent any time sitting around in their chaotic storage room, it was badly battered and torn.

Scruffy everyday.

When I stripped away the fabric, what remained was an abstract shape of almost mathematical simplicity, but also immediately recognizable as the skeleton of a lampshade. I was thinking about what I could turn it into, and the thought struck me that there is no other object around us based on that very shape. There are loads of shapes and forms like that around us, that for compounded reasons of practicality and habit, stay the same year in and year out. Really, there are loads of possible shapes for a lampshade, and many are indeed used, but this very specific classical lampshade shape has been around for a long time and will surely also remain. Is it our need for familiarity that makes us create consistency in our surroundings? Originally the design was surely a result of practicalities of production combined with peoples aesthetic ideals, but all those values have long since given way to reasons of habit and convention.

The orange glow is only visible in the dark.

I decided to keep the shape, but alter the function. By dressing the lamp in a non transparent medium, completely covering all openings, I sterilized its usefulness, and turned it into a monument of its own shape. The addition of basic shapes both above and below is meant to reinforce this impression. I hope that the choice of material is alien enough, while still retaining a certain closeness to what one would expect, to form a link between old usage and new abstract form. It is instantly recognizable but completely different.

Object no. 5