Window Installation and Evaluation

Artwork Overview

For my final piece, I am creating a window installation. I will be using a variety of materials & techniques to achieve the final design which will be a blacked out space with a light bulb at the centre hanging from the ceiling. Around the bulb will be broken objects from my box file that will hang on strings. As well as that, casts of the objects that I couldn't break to hang up such as the tiger. Around the edges, I will place casts of parts of my room. Since it's my own personal space, I want it to reflect my memories of the room as well as the objects. I will cast spaces such as the door, walls, desks and chairs. The final piece that will be present in the installation will be a treasure box that will contain all the items that still remain in my box file. The treasure box highlights the fact that they are precious to me and that they are as important as treasure. 

Before I begun thinking about things to hang, I did a quick test to see what is going to be the best material to hand my objects on. It was either string, metal wire or fishing wire. In the end, string was the most handy as it was the thinnest and least visible. The wires were thick and reflected the light too much and I found that troublesome because I will be working with light. The wire was also thick and I had to adjust it when I hung it to make sure it was pointing down where string would simply go down  right away without any resistance. 

Location

 The artwork will be located at the main entrance of Chestnut Grove school at the left side of the automatic doors. The corridor is darker than the rest of the building and this will give a better effect to my installation as I am working with light. As people walk through, the first thing they will spot is the window giving out light and since I am planning to use a strong light bulb, the darkness around will disappear and be replaced by my installation.

Design


 My installation will be a site-specific piece of art. The main ingredient of the artwork will be the light bulb. It will be located right at the centre of the window frame. The sides of the window will be blacked out using black paper in order to give the light the best effect it can get. The bulb will hand from the centre of the ceiling and will be connected to a cable. As the cable gets to the top, I will cover it up with more black paper until it gets right to the bottom where the plug entrance is. This will also be covered up. At the top where the cable is located, I will place a strong spiral made of either wire, or other strong material. This will be used to hang up all the broken objects and casts of the objects I can't hung up. I will use white string to hang them to help reduce shadowing made from the light bulb. White will not absorb the light as much and most likely won't create any shadows of the string which is what I want.
I will be placing a small treasure box at the bed of the installation. The box will contain all the items which I didn't hung on the strings. 
Since the sides of the window ain't filled in, I decided to fill some of the corners with casts from my room. I want to cast some of the objects in my room where all the memories come from and use them to fill parts of the installation.  

Materials

My installation will require a blacked out venue. I will be using black paper around the whole area of the installation. I will need a light bulb connected to a cable that can connect directly to the plug. This will most likely be found in 99p store in Balham. I will need white string to hang up all my broken up objects from the ceiling. I will most likely hang them in a spiral made from wire or plastic depending if I find one in 99p store. I also need to buy a small treasure box which can also be found in that store. Other than that, I will need scissors and pva glue to stick the casts to the wall. Also blue-tac to stick any objects to the string which can't be tied to it.

Health and Safety

I will most likely need eye protection while hanging up my objects. Some of them are sharp and might be dangerous if I don't tie them properly and they drop. A pair of goggles would do the job at these circumstances.
I also need to consider the health and safety for the surroundings. I want to know if the light bulb might be too hot in which case I need to make sure the objects are well spaced out and not too close to the light bulb. I also want to know what would happen if someone was to smash the glass.It would go all over the place and I don't want that to happen. In this case, I need to get a sticky sheet to put it on top of the glass pane. In this case, if it smashes, it will not shatter and spread all over the floor. 


Budget

I will most likely need around £5 for the items I want to buy from 99p store. The rest of the materials such as strings can be accessed from the school, but would not cost more than £1 from a local sewing shop.
I want to get an item to hang down all of my objects on string. It has to be something with an either spiral or a circle shape to get a wide area to cover the strings.
I will need a light bulb and a cable I can connect to it and connect it to the plug in my installation.
I want a small treasure chest for the items I will not hang on strings. It will sit at the bottom centre of my installation. I will access these items from either http://www.poundland.co.uk/ or
http://www.99pstoresltd.com/

Links

My window installation is a site specific piece of art. This links to the artist Andy Goldsworthy who was creating prints of himself outside as well as producing installations of his own. He is a site specific artist and  my work will be linking to that.
My treasure box idea comes from the artist Andy Warhol. He was a collectionist who created time capsules in form of boxes. He collected items every month and this links to the idea of me collecting items for my bx file. The box file itself is a form of a time capsule as it carries items specifically linked to me as a form of memory.
The next link comes from Cornelia Parker. She was the artist that inspired me to use a light bulb in my artwork. She would hung the light bulb and use a broken object and hand it up around the light bulb using strings. Sometimes she would use kitchen implement such as forks, plates or spoons. I will be breaking some of my objects in the box file and hanging them n strings from the ceiling of the installation. They will go around the bulb creating shadows on the black paper that will be present around it. 
Another one of my links comes from the artist  Valerie Jolly. She was an artist who worked with casts. She would take an object, cast in in tissue paper and PVA and then peel it off when it all dries. The cast would become a replica of the object itself, but only being colorless and weightless. I want to cast the objects in my box which I won't break up and then hang up the casts themselves to go with the broken parts from my box file. This links both the artists Cornelia Parker and Valerie Jolly as I am using Jolly's techniques with the way of presenting of Cornelia Parker.
I also want to cast some of the objects in my room. The items from my box file came from there and it will be a good idea to take some of my room to the final piece as well. I want to cast the desk, chair, door handle and the walls in my room. Then I want to put them into my installation as part of the background. This will create a better mood and the artwork will be significant towards me even more.
The last link comes from the artist Naum Gabo. He specialised in the use of strings and balance when using them in the sculpture. I'm using strings in my final piece and the most important thing when I hang things up will be the balance and spaces where I apply the string. Without balance, the broken objects will look off place and won't cover the space effectively. The artist managed to use strings to create the balance and I want to apply this in my final piece.

Evaluation

When I got around doing my installation, there were many problems I had to face while putting items together in the window. I got a good light bulb and a holder with a cable that with the help of an extender, reached all the way to the power socket while the light bulb was hanging down.
At the top of the window, there were 2 wooden blocks which I used to get some willow sticks across. This allowed the round clothes dryer to stay at the centre while being held by the willow sticks.
I then hung down the light bulb through the centre and made it go down about 50cm from the top.
The clothes dryer was sprayed white so it would match the window colors which were black and white.

At the start, I covered the surrounding using white sugar paper. It was a bit darker than the usual plain paper and I thought it would be great for the shadows. The problem I faced is that the staples were too visible and I had use tape to hold the paper together without leaving loose ends. This had to be changed because it stood out too much. I got a large roll of black paper and I was able to get it around the window and what this did, was created an all way round black cover. It was about 1 metre in width which made me have to do the same thing higher up so that the whole background would be covered in black. At the start, I was worried that the black paper would absorb all the light and make very dim shadows, but that didn't happen. The shadows were still very visible and overall, it worked better than the white paper.

It was now time to start hanging down the objects on string. I had a fairly thin string and I started to attach objects from one side. For some of them, I had to use blu tac because they were either round or didn't have an edge to get the string tied to it. After I got a few objects tied, I started to hang them up from the dryer. I had about 20 objects when I realised that they were very easily getting in the way of one another and constantly tangling up. It was something I didn't want to happen so I decided to hang them up from the willow sticks that I put up there. It have more area to cover as well as more space to hang the objects.

I also changed the idea of sticking some of my casts to the wall. I decided to also hang them with all the other objects. Having them on the wall would effect some of the shadows and I didn't want that to happen in my installation.

As I got around 40 objects hung on the string, there was little space to carry on hanging them from above. In my original design, they all had to hung down from the top, but I decided to change that. I started hanging some of the objects from one another. It was mainly smaller objects such as the toy soldiers and bottle caps. I didn't want to hang the heavier objects due because the string might have not been strong enough and it could break.

At this point, the light bulb holder I got broke. The on and off switch stopped working and I could no longer use it. This forced me to buy another one and this time, instead of the normal bulb, I decided on a power saving one in order to reduce the heat given out. This was to prevent any of the objects becoming too hot as a safety protocol.

As I added more objects on strings, I started to run out of space to hang them. There were getting too close to one another and were getting easily tangled up. In order to carry on adding more objects, I hung them down from the ones already there. I used blu tac to stick the string to the object already hanging. This created a much better effect as all the smaller objects were further away from the bulb and that also created more shadows in the window.

I was able to hang around 60 objects in total which left some incredible shadows in the installation. The only thing left to do was the base. I removed any papers and cleaned out the buttom in order to be able to add a sheet of black paper as the base. I cut out a good to fit shape and placed it down. The only thing I didn't like was that the corners were not touching at all sides. What I did was usecd some black strips of black paper to cover the corners. This gave a good finish and the blak covered everything at the sides.
The rest of the process was simply making sure that all the sides looked smooth and that the shadows were clearly visible. The power saving bulb didn't give out as much light, but it still got the shadows clearly visible. 

The Final Piece


3 comments:

  1. I am very impresed with your Installation proposal! It will be a good idea to ensure that you have a wider range of visuals or sketches showing different viewpoints. This will help a client in their approval of your ideas. Great links to your artists!

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  2. A good clear plan of intentions for what your instillation will look like and key links to artists. It is great that you have experimented with materials and processes to discover what may be the most effective. I agree that more sketches from different viewpoints would clarify your outcome to others. Well done.

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  3. Hi Adam,

    Could you just add the image of the Final window display please.

    Mr B

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