THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 8th APRIL 2021: DAY 375

'Composition in White (Sculpture)', The Sichuan Fine Art Institute,
Chongqing China, July 2012

'Composition in White (Sculpture)', The Sichuan Fine Art Institute, Chongqing China, July 2012

My artist residency in Chongqing was based across 2 art facilities, the 501 Artspace and the Sichuan Fine Art Institute which is the oldest and most prestigious art institute in China drawing its students from across the whole country. One of my first visits to the institute was as a guest at the Private View for that year’s Graduation Exhibition of their Sculpture School. During this visit I toured the exhibition with my translator and the Gallery Directors who as I was leaving surprised me by explaining through my translator that they would like to commission me to produce a new situation specific installation for the galleries main, 4 storey, exhibition hall.

This piece again evolved very organically from this first and over subsequent visits to the gallery and exhibition. As I came to know the space I realised that this was another occasion where the nature of the space, its use and contents were the defining factors in the piece that I would create; it also acted as an interesting foil, and in the end companion piece, to the piece that I was also developing for the 501 Artspace across the city. This gallery spoke more of sculpture than of anything else, the large cubic spaces full of very beautiful, but traditional, sculptures presented on a wide range of standard, white, wooden plinths, these were the elements and the concepts which I wished to illuminate. As the exhibition progressed, I became more and more interested in the nature of exhibiting sculpture and particularly in the usage of the plinth itself, in how the plinth as a 3-dimensional object is used to elevate and isolate a piece of sculpture. Lifting a small object anthropomorphically into our world for its consideration as our equal. These are ideas that I have approached on several occasions in the past in sculptural pieces such as Chair, Sculpture and Plinth and Self Portrait with Giant Jenga.

These notions lead me to build Composition in White (Sculpture) from all of the plinths that had been used to exhibit the sculptures in the Graduation Exhibition. Whilst the piece was being built the gallery directors tried to have the plinths painted to hide the accumulation of dust that had settled on the during the previous exhibition, I however refused to let them as these negative space “drawing”, spoke so clearly to the purposes of the plinths and of their day to day life. The final act was to gather every available spotlight together and direct them onto the piece, in consideration of how a piece of sculpture would be highlighted on its plinth, this meant the whole gallery was only illuminated by light reflected off the installation and gave the piece a “jewel” like quality although it was constructed from base materials.

To be continued...