Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Sculpture: Material and Conceptual Investigation

READY- MADES
The concept of the Ready-Made isn't a very new one. In fact, if you look around you today, absolutely everything seems to be a copy of a copy, or a remake of a previous idea or taking an existing idea or object/s and 'reorganising' them to change their materiality and meaning.

"...The term found art—more commonly found object (French: objet trouvĂ©) or readymade—describes art created from undisguised, but often modified, objects that are not normally considered art, often because they already have a non-art function. Marcel Duchamp was the originator of this in the early 20th century" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_art)

There's a great history of found art and readymades, so the investigation really should start with Duchamp, in the sculpture realm. But this doesn't stop there: anti-art, found art, found poetry, altered books - it's all a great big mix up of materials giving you a new sense of the 'objects' being.

So, in this exercise, I took a few items found around the house, and 'verbed' them - did something to them - that alters their material state.... so it's a bit of a journey really. Some examples take more thought. The egg box - it was painted, fed to the birds, driven over by a car, punched, and then hung....


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