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