Fragmentation - an installation.

The initial interest in creating art from beach pottery has held sway over the year and is no doubt set to continue into my final year.

Initally I set out to explore the objects through experimentation with materials and settings. Then I began to be more intersested in what the objects could say for themselves.

On a micro level, selected objects were painted to suggest the landscape itself. This was done on board 30 cm squared. Companion paintings were completed on a macro level to balance the detailed landscape ones and to suggest gentle overviews of the same landscape with the fragments merely implied.

From there it seemed a natural transition to paint on found wood itself. Applying mixtures of sand, pva and acrylic paint where it felt appropriate, painting a replica of a small object too, sanding down and applying a mixture of beeswax/turps to restore and bring out the grain and finally adding geometric shapes from new wood to allow contrast.

I wanted to explore how clay would work. Taking a pottery fragment and reinstating it into clay to produce a morphic shape that returned it in some ways to its origin. This was problematic as in the drying process, the clay pulled away from the fragment. This did allow for some cracking in the process which added to the appeal but the end products did seem fragile. By applying yacht varnish, adhesion was ensured to some degree.

The final installation was to read as as cabinet of curiosity. Black paper was stuck to a wall to give set boundary lines and to add depth.I chose as a site, a section of panel in the Sculpture Court that was protecting one of the artefacts ECA is famous for. It read as a cLines for shelves were suggested on the horizontal plane and objects/paintings attached as if floating. Relationships were explored along the way. The micro paintings were put up first to set the scene - sky, boundary, land and sea. The others were arranged accordingly. From a distance it read as a form of map. Close-up the details and textures of the pieces could be explored.

Black was perhaps not the best choice. A few criticisms were voiced. Ideally, I would have painted the background to provide a clean, polished background - probably best in dark grey, but time did not allow for this.