I love to communicate concepts through materials. These sculptures below are new designs of my previous 'Light Boxes' in Ba3a, however there purpose is completely different. I created these forms in response to Alice Greenwood Bliss's poem 'Room' and 'Box'. In these connecting poems Alice writes a rhythm of thoughts and feelings whilst sitting in a room, she talks about the light moving around the room, the illusions of shadows, and her mind playing tricks on her perception of her surroundings. All these running, jumping thoughts are happening within the confinements of the four walls of her room. This room becomes the only environment perceived.
This contrast of fluid thought and structured confinements was a significant theme within both poems, inspiring me to designs of these sculptures. The uniting quality of these materials (concrete and acrylic) represents the conflicting subjects within the poem - Alice and the room, mind and form. The concrete is hard, structured, thick, dense, opaque, it is the limitation to the transparent acrylic. I see acrylic as a fluid form, it's transparency and ability to let light through makes the material more interactive and playful, like Alice's thoughts.
The colours of the acrylic represent the growing emotions within the poem.
The process of making these sculptures resulted in unplanned outcomes, such as the cracks in the concrete. Each mould would come out completely different, even the texture and colour. But I had no intention in creating a perfect box shape with sharp corners, I liked the distressed aesthetic, it added to the character of the changing room Alice had described. The distressed aesthetic also encourages the conflict between both concepts and materials, there is an obvious force, pressure between both materials.
These sculptures were designed to interact with the light from the projection within my installation. The light passes through the acrylic and carries the colour to the nearest surface behind, this act continues to communicate the fluidity of Alice's thought, escaping past the confinements of the room, but still continuing the form of the room (the concrete).