Artists Research for FMP
Starting my bacteria project i had the idea to look at some ephemeral artwork as the basis of my project and i came across Helen Chadwick. the 1986 piece of artwork ‘Carcass’ resonated with me.
the 2 meter pillar originally made from glass and now perspex is filled with rotted vegetables so it composts in front of us leaving these amazing swathes or colour and various patterns across the surface.
“what I hadn’t anticipated was the fact that there would be this fermentation process, particularly with the weight compacting the lower, older material down, and it was constantly percolating bubbles which you could watch kind of fizzing up. So ironically it became more a metaphor for life than The Oval Court, stretched out like a blue corpse in the next room.”
(‘Interview with Mark Haworth-Booth’, in Portfolio Gallery 1996, unpaginated.)
The undulations and textures rife throughout Carcass really intrigue me and show me what i could do with the heart pluck. The stark colour change from reds, greens and oranges to this vastly brown mass with subtle veins of beige and white. the texture changes and the ora of death and decay caries so much weight, everyone can appreciate death as a force of nature and being able to visualise it and spectate the changes it brings is to me very somber but also extremely profound.
I want to look at how i could encapsulate the heart pluck and i thing a bell jar with a air tight lid, however i would have to probably remove the lid every-so-often as Chadwick found out after Carcass began to leak from a pressure build up from gasses produced from the decomposition. However it wouldn’t sit as well in a clear perspex box and it will need to be held in suspension from a liquid and i think the best one would probably be water as it wouldn’t prevent the decay to happen?
Harry Toller 