The Self-Isolation Residency 26th April 2020: Day 28

Exploring Sculpture No.2: 'Engine', found objects, 2009,
Antony Clarkson

I know you may have been expecting to see the final version of my self portrait today, it had even crossed my mid that you might. I've worked on it quite a bit today but actually by saying that I mean that I have done some painting but also an awful lot of refection on the piece. As I stated yesterday it is so close to completion and I really don't want to over work it, so I would rather step back a little today rather than rush things to to make sure that I work to complete everything that is necessary and don't do any work on anything that is already complete and unnecessary.  With that out of the way I have decided to return to my series of sculpture retrospectives today.

And so  today I'm moving onto my second sculpture built from objects found in my new studio in 2009. On this occasion I did have to modify some of the objects as in I cut the wood and cut away the spokes from the bicycle wheel, but the wood, the elastic bands the bicycle wheel and the screws etc were all in the studio when I moved into it.  In lots of ways I was very fortunate to have just built 'Still' from found objects as it gave to me a very strong direction concept wise of 'Engine' and also set my brain working in the right way to recognise the potential for the materials available to me.  'Engine' has a very similar heritage to 'Still' it that they are; (A) both made from found materials from the same location and (B) they are both based on (pseudo) scientific or at least almost useless scientific ideas or principles.   The idea behind engine was born out of a documentary that I had seen on TV at sometime in my youth (in actuality this should be a (C) factor of connection between the two pieces as I'm pretty sure that I also saw the idea for 'Still' I'm a similar TV show) which demonstrated the thermodynamics of a simple rubber bamd heat engine. The model that I saw on TV probably in the late 1970s -80s, which was solar powered, used very light weight rubber bands and cardboard to make a, vaguely, working example, something similar can be seen here.  My concept was similar to that of 'Still' and was to make a (non) working (at this stage there was still the faint chance that it may have worked but that really didn't matter) sculptural representation of the process. Which means that I would use the scientific principles working or not to create their own aesthetic.

Needless to say 'Engine' did not work as an engine, but it did work as a sculpture, it's probable that if it had worked as an engine it would have been less successful as a sculpture. There are also other connection between 'Still' and 'Engine': they are both in theory solar powered and therefore on the fridges of both perpetual-motion and the eco-power debates. But they are also on the fringes of kinetic sculpture which is another interest of mind. Actually there is another more personal connection for me in that they won me my first arts award and projected me towards my first international exhibition at the Finish Academy of Fine Art in Helsinki and to my first international installation piece there.