been working several solid days on these concertinas using the guts of the electoral boundaries books.
the photographs i have taken diligently feel all too hard to sort out today, so I’m just going to post some thoughts and a few videos of the completed or in progress pieces.
I started with an idea of doing something like Cressida Campbell’s long frieze of spice jars and bowls all arrayed along the shelf above her kitchen sink. I post a lot of images of chairs on my instagram. This is mostly because they are ubiquitous – i randomly chose this item to be my go to for drawing etc before a trip to Paris in 2006. maybe a long time before. I distinctly remember Pip saying a drawing teacher had said to find something you find everywhere, and i chose chairs. And then of course I got annoyed with people discarding perfectly useful chairs by the side of the road, and then there was some delightful angles coming from dead chairs… so i’m tied to them. So chairs. Frieze number 1 was pictures of chairs and a few other lovely images found in random magazines left in the airbnb I’m staying in. It was 9 pages long.
Frieze Number 2 was only 5 pages long, and used more of the chairs. Plus bits from a bunnings magazine which i was using to keep my glue from the piece (of course, they had heaps of chairs and some pleasing timber).
Frieze Number 3 I took a few gourmet traveller magazines from a restaurant where we had dinner, and collaged in bowls, bottles and etc.
Frieze Number 4 was plates from gourmet traveller. I took to it with a blue sharpie and extended the lines, and now I’m not exactly sure what to do next, but will find out today I suspect.
Frieze Number 5 i pasted in bowls and saucepans which were mostly intact. I wanted to use the circles to make the original rounded objects. I disliked the effect of the food on the plates, so pasted in some patterned origami paper (bought on a whim on special at bunnings – originally christmas stuff, but i avoided the overt christmas trees and went for the stripes etc. Rather than a shelf it looks like an aerial view of abstract food at an alien dinner party.
I’m about to approach Frieze number 6, and I’ve bought brown kraft paper, and I plan to cut the shapes from them, so it’s more about the shapes and less about the colours. Who knows how it will turn out.
I’ve been keeping a single stripe of colour going across the pages since number 2, and I really like that, originally because a particular magazine page colour caught my eye. actually i just noticed that number 4 doesn’t have one, and that may be why i’m less excited about it – maybe less cohesive?
perhaps the next one could have
- a brown paper line?
- a brown paper cut out line (like the paper dollies we used to make as kids)
- I’ve kinda neglected the electoral boundaries lines in 3 – 5: in the earlier versions i connected the lines around the objects, perhaps i can bring them back
- i could thicken the existing lines on the maps
- or i could do all of them because I have the technology and the spare paper to do so.
Here are some videos of the pieces.
