Documentation

I started this project because I am not a very good cook and every time I cook I make a mess in the kitchen. One day I tried to crack an egg in a pan, but when the shell broke the whole egg white with the yolk went down the sink and I felt so powerless in that moment that I couldn't catch it and watched it disappear, leaving only pieces of egg shell and a mess.

I keep thinking back to that brief moment and realise that there is a trigger point for many things that happen and then spiral out of control. This “trigger” is subtle and in the macro world can even be easily overlooked. So I tried to zoom in on an important decisive moment, like “the decisive moment” in photography.

I began to try to translate the feeling of momentary loss of control into two-dimensional lines on my sketchbook. I built a plant form that tilts higher and higher, creating otherworldly landscapes that defy physical principles is my style. The uncertainty of its impending tilt led me to wonder if I could try to use materials that looked solid to paradoxically present the uncontrollable feeling of imminent collapse.

Sketch #1

I have always been interested in the psychedelic culture associated with natural life forms. From this, I learned that mushrooms, as a hallucinogen, can bring about a feeling of being on the verge of losing control, so I painted landscapes that resembled mushrooms, with curves that extended the traces of growth.

Gradually, the form of my work began to take on a vague outline.

Sketch #2

I began to select materials, initially wanting to try harder metals. I collected grape stems and tomato stems, which are long and thin enough to be used as skeletal supports in a landscape, and with the help of Lyndsey made them into wax trees and cast them into bronze branches using the lost wax method.

However, the cast forms were too figurative and in the process of cutting and polishing these bronze stems I found that they were not easy to shape further.

I therefore abandoned hard metal, which is not easily shaped by hand, in favour of aluminium wire, which is easily bent and shaped, as the structural skeleton.

I bent and coiled the aluminium wire, wrapping it several times around where it needed to be held in place, and wrapped it in tinfoil for internal padding, shaping the general outline bit by bit.

In the process of weaving the wire, I had the idea of combining a real life event with a trigger moment that I wanted to express.

Skeleton Frame [44cm x 25cm x 36cm]

I tried to use landscapes to describe the situation of a broken egg sliding down the sink, using grotesque and absurd biomorphic forms to abstract all the things affected around the event.

I deconstructed reality and then reconstructed it in a surreal way, mixing, condensing and solidifying the accidental moments, the coincidences of the environment, the chaotic movements of the scene, and organising the thoughts and feelings of the people involved around it.

After shaping the internal skeleton, I started to roll the clay into a thin cake and then covered the skeleton with the clay, trying to fit the clay as closely as possible to the surface of the tinfoil so that when the clay dried, the surface would have an uneven texture.

Originally I was thinking of colouring the clay surface and adding shellfish and fibre fabrics etc. but at crits, Olivia said to me that you have to think about whether the additions will add or detract from your work. In discussion with Yuchen, she also said that keeping the white colour of the clay itself would be sufficient.

I thought about it and decided that adding something else to the surface would affect the texture of the bumpy surface and the shadows when the light hits it, so I chose to keep the original colour.

I have abstracted the sink plug onto the 'hollow mushroom' on the left, while the right seems to be the splash of water in the sink at that moment. I conceal the broken egg because it is the figurative trigger.

Their overall shapes are tilted and twisted, their surfaces uneven, as if something is about to break out of the ground. I freeze this dynamic moment as a white landscape, making it quiet and docile, but hiding a great sense of loss of control.

After landscape had taken shape as a carrier, I made a series of strange creatures, such as a small flower monster with a crushed arm, a patriarch with a mushroom hat and a cloak, an octopus sailor lying in an avocado skin, and some nuts hidden in a cave at some point , all of which express the effects of events that happen and then fade away on the people and things outside.

The whole work presents a sense of growth and extension in all directions, an underlying sense of vitality that is meant to suggest that this influence is ongoing and does not dissipate instantly like a trigger.

Sketch #3

After the clay forms had all dried, I chose to drip uv glue onto the various edges of landscapes and exotic creatures, shining a UV light on them as I did so to speed up the coagulation of the glue for shaping. Also, in this way I can create crystals that defy gravity and extend upwards.

I used the glue to create the sensation of a momentary freeze, where the drip is about to fall but does not, where the touch is about to be touched but not yet touched, as if I had caught the decisive second before the event goes out of control and made it freeze here.

Trigger Freeze, Trigger Free [46cm x 34cm x 40cm] 2022

In terms of the layout, I initially wanted to use a folded tinfoil underneath the landscape to create a water ripple texture. However, Yuchen advised me that it should be on a very flat surface, so as not to break the overall sense of quietness of the piece.

I experimented with tinfoil, fabric, etc. and finally chose the reflective cellophane, which proved to be the best.

In the next Unit 2, I intend to continue to focus on the uncontrollable nature of the event and the ongoing effects on the surrounding objects after its instantaneous fermentation. Given that I lost my dog in a car accident a week ago, and that I am still overwhelmed by immense grief, I feel more and more that the aftermath of uncontrollable events is huge and unending.

I didn't experience this unpredictable tragedy myself, I was just told about it. As a result, it was always as if I felt that the event was lacking in authenticity, that it was just a fact that was imposed on people that needed to be believed. I can't help but think that truth and unreality go hand in hand when there is a time lag between the person's subsequent reaction and the moment of the event, and this is a subject I want to explore in Unit 2.

In addition, I want to focus more on exploring the properties of materials than in my previous work, to discover and provoke more contradictory material expressions. I consider that my work in Unit 1 was more focused on the overall shape and visual aesthetics, and did not expand on the material properties. When the same material is used in different states or in combination with other materials, it is important for me to think about how to take it out of its original context and create new insights.