Poppy Lloyd came in fairly early before there was so much to see in the gallery and was very enthusiastic about what I was doing. The two objects she gave me were among the ugliest of my whole collection, but I have the feeling she had picked them out as a sort of challenge. Object no 14 was the outer shell of an electrical fake candle. It was a useless part of what had once been a simulacrum, faking the cosiness of evenings at home with lit candles. I had it sitting for a while, trying to come up with something clever to transform it into, but the more I looked at it the more I had the feeling that there was something sinister about it.

More sinister than funny

Instead of changing it I wanted to show its true nature, display it on a pedestal with all its nastiness exposed. I ended up creating quite an elaborate piece, appropriating the style of Goth artists using dripping, black paint over satanic symbols on an old ceramic lamp stand, almost like a theatre stage to influence peoples view of the lost candle I had started with.

Faux Gothic Heavy Metal art.

To further enhance the eerie feeling of an evil object (like objects could have any morals at all) I mounted an elaborate battery driven mechanism inside the lamp stand, faintly illuminating a glowing red eye down in the centre of it, only visible if one peek deep down into the candle. For me the exaggerated visual language, and the post ironical way I use it, is proof of how much our imagination will help fill in to fool us despite our better knowledge, because despite having created it myself, I still feel a bit weird glimpsing it behind my shoulder when I turn around, or leaving it with the internal red light turned on when I leave for the night.

Object no. 14