COFA 1002 Concept Statement
Exponential viral expansion as a representation of desire and the mechanisms of desire is the concept underpinning my experimental practice. Desire and the unrestrained pursuit of those desires as it applies to the divergent thought processes of young children. Children place no limitations on the things they desire or on the methods they will employ to acquire them. Their divergent thoughts are not restrained by laws of nature, physics or perceptions of right and wrong. They know what they want and what they need to do to get it.
Deleuze describes desire as a productive force, but he suggests that one never just desires something or someone, but rather one desires an ‘ensemble’. Therefore desire of, for example a women, is also desire for the world this particular woman is enveloped in. Geertz speaks about ‘the webs of significance we spin around ourselves’. When, surrounded by our webs, we make contact with the object of our desire we become entangled and ensnared in their webs and we both permanently transformed by the encounter.
I have used viruses as a visual and metaphorical representation of this process. A virus has only one desire, which is to continue living and grow exponentially. It needs to infect other cells, possess them and mutate them. When a virus ensnares another cell, the two interact and as a consequence both are permanently transformed, exponential expansion follows and the virus is now an unstoppable force.
I have taken both the concept of unrestrained viral growth and the idea that we are all surrounded by webs of significance and using cross-disciplinary methods in my experimentation attempted to fuse the two together. Creating by hand multiple individual sculptural representations of viruses using glass, ceramics and wire, I then fused them into a spreading mass. My inspiration came from Luke Jerram who creates visual representations of actual viruses using glass and David Kiddle and Laura McNamara who both use ceramics to create patterned masses of bacteria and wearable designs based upon growth in petri dishes. My soft sculptural experiment using hand dyed fabric and reclaimed doilies which I then hand stitched was inspired by Lisa Kellner’s hand dyed silk installations which express the language of decay and disease. I created videos, which I then manipulated in iMovie to visually recreate the process of bacteria blooming and growing in petri dishes. I watched time lapsed videos of actual bacterial growth on YouTube and looked at the work of artist Suzanne Lee who cultivates bacteria then harvests the forms to use as fabric. For my mixed media piece using ink, rice paper and netting I investigated works by Margot Dedrick and Laura Olear who both create artworks based upon viruses viewed through microscopes.
I have chosen the soft sculpture as my final piece as the methods used in producing this piece had a procedural and clinical quality to them, reminiscent of those used in scientific research or medical procedures, both of which interact with bacteria and viruses. The white fabric representative of bandages is immersed in antiseptic like liquids whilst I am wearing protective clothing and gloves to prevent cross contamination; it is then sanitised by washing and exposure to sunlight. I stitch together the separate components using needle and thread as though performing a necessary surgery.
The finished piece when hung as an installation is a visual representation of an organic mass. Each separate cell suspended tumour like, in the act of being consumed and transformed by the cancerous black net enveloping it. The cells are translucent so you can see the process of transformation that occurs through contact. The colours used are the colours of sickly flesh, washed out and muted, some cells are green and obviously gangrenous. One cell touching and interacting with the next one, becoming fused together into an unrestrained juggernaut of viral growth.
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