Display of my production pieces

at the MoB Workspace sale

It has been a very successful event, this sale of ours.

Above - a customer in action.

Series Reflections on Technology

as displayed in the Installation Space,

Queensland College of Art,

Brisbane

Bubble, 2009

Bubble, 2009

Aluminium, speaker cable, zipper, cotton thread

Front view

Top side view

Back side view

Bottom view (my favourite one)

30 hours of weaving later

- at this stage there is still a zipper missing at the back

22 hours of weaving later

12 hours of weaving later

8 hours of weaving later

For this piece I had to create a support/armature to be able to weave it in the shape I wanted.

It took a while to make the support and the first stage of the weaving was a bit of a challenge. The support cage had to be supported from outside and inside.....the first woven bit (image above) took around 4 hours. It takes a bit of patience to weave into such curves.

Collar II., 2009 - side view 2

Aluminium, speaker cable, hut elastic, stainless steel fndings

This image shows nicely the way this piece is designed to fit the curves of the neck - left side fits on the back of the neck and the right side fits at the front, bellow the jaw. Fastening is positioned on the side of the neck.

Collar II., 2009 - side view

The long panels sit over the wearers ear and shoulder.

Collar II., 2009 - top view

I have applied what I have learned to the following pieces, surprisingly called Collar II., it worked out very well.

Making this piece I have learned three things.

1/ sandblasting as a finish on aluminium is very fragile, picks up finger prints very easily and needs to be handled in gloves

2/ wearable pieces of this kind need to be crimped from centre to the ends to gain an even spacing between panels and good shape

3/ crimping has to be done on a round surface to provide the right curve for the cables to sit in

Things went really quickly since my last post and suddenly I have the whole series finished.

The necklace above is, just like the rest of the pieces, made out of sandblasted aluminium and speaker cables. Button has been cut out from an old mother board and painted white.

Cuff 2009 from the new series Reflections on technology

Collar I. - in progress

Another piece coming together. Facing some small technical issues though. The panels don't seem to stay in place. I am thinking about some heat treatment of the cable .....

All the panels are designed to fit the curves of the neck. Shorter pieces will sit at the front, long pieces will sit at the back.

Assembling - Cuff '09' - continue

I wanted to create photograms of the cuff in the process of assembling. However, as I have found out the light sensitive paper I own is past its date of use and no one is supplying it anymore. Tom Kibbly - the original supplier - said that the producers have moved on and turned into new technologies. And so did I. Using my digital camera I have taken a number of photos and plan to further process them in Photoshop to see if I can get a similar effect to that of a photogram.

Assembling - Cuff '09'

This is another piece which belongs to the body of work named "Reflections on Technology". It is inspired by the idea of armour and conceptually it draws upon the notions of our belief in "protective" function of personal electronic devices such as mobile phones or iPods.

I took these pictures as I find the lines created by the cable and the aluminium panels very visually interesting.

First piece from the new body of work - components

These are components of an oversized necklace which have been cut out of aluminium and sandblasted. Sandblasting works really well on the aluminium, minimum of sanding needs to be done to prepare the metal. Due to the softness of aluminium any scratches - except the very deep ones - are removed by the medium used for sandblasting.

Experiments with aluminium and speaker cable

These are rough models for possible wearable pieces, created in 2009.

Knitted production works