#kab130

At this stage, we have only just been introduced to the concept of object and space.

Pre-task notes

Johanna Burton identifies that though sculpture only continues to expand and absorb different practices of art, it no longer suggests a complete 'collapse' of the term as it was once claimed (Krauss, 1978) -- it is simply the form's current 'state of being' (Ellegood, 2009).

There is now a lot of freedom in the making of sculpture, the form itself being both so broad and generous towards experimentation. Beyond being subject to physical conditions and viewable in a 3D space (Armstrong, 2026), it can be practically whatever an artist is able to create- any materials, organic or synthetic; any scale; any symbol or theme, or lack thereof; anything that wants to be a sculpture can be a sculpture. In a way, that is what makes it almost intimidating for me.

To this end, the thought of making a sculpture in the first week of semester was daunting, but ultimately a helpful push for a starting point.

Task Summary + Materials

We were tasked with creating sculptures out of limited materials: namely, a range of metal wires and rods of varying thickness, as well as an assortment of strings, cables, and other ‘tying’ materials available in the workshop. There wasn't a strict theme as to what the sculptures must be, but we were to make them with the environment around us in mind, with the intention of fitting that sculpture into the environment afterwards.

Process: Thoughts, Challenges, Outcome

My immediate first challenge was deciding how I could fit a 3D work into the space around us: mostly, some greenery and concrete buildings and pathways. I decided I wanted to nest something among the existing man-made garden spaces.

I first decided to slightly curl two varying lengths of metal rod, and then join them together towards the ends using the spot welder. The idea was to emulate (vaguely) the look of long grass or reeds swayed by the wind, as it was breezy and drizzly the day we were working. After this, I began to wind bits of other wire and cord around both rods.

As I did this, I realised what I was making appeared very man-made, almost industrial. Of course this was a consequence of working with such industrial looking materials, but I wanted to try and create more organic forms. With this in mind, I decided to incorporate a thicker woollen string material, teasing apart the fibres to create a 'tuft' that could be placed on top of one of the metal 'reeds'.

From here, I decided to add green plastic cable to create a similar effect on the opposite reed- of strands of material drooping down, like a flowering plant or tree.

At this point, the contrast between the two reeds became quite obvious to me: the wool-topped rod leaned more organic, while the green-cabled reed looked more like a man-made plastic palm tree. I thought for a while about whether or not I should lean into that contrast and continue to make them go in opposite visual directions, or if I should try and unify them somehow as one object.

This was the main 'roadblock' I encountered in this task beyond just finding the ideas to start on it; I was unsure which direction would be better suited to the environment this work would be situated in.

So, I took another look at that environment. The main feeling of the area seemed to be of something man-made dressed up as something organic: concrete surrounded by spots of green space, but even those spaces were put in by people-- the lawn neatly kept, the shrubbery planted and trimmed down, even the trees maintained in places they probably didn't originally grow before they were placed there.

Likewise, though my work thus far appeared to be split in two between organic and industrial, really they were just two halves of something trying to appear more organic than it actually was in order to fit in with the constructed space around it: a space that had been specifically made by man to appear more natural than it was.

With a clearer idea of what I was doing now, I began to hang a more fibrous thread from the green plastic 'branches'. I then made more of the teased-apart cotton tufts I had used before to secure to the end of these branches.

Now it visually made more sense to me. The organic colour palette of green, beige, and brown gave it a flora-like feel, but it also still had enough of a constructed form that it didn't look like it was directly trying to recreate any particular flower or tree.

I placed it in one of the garden spots, intentionally nesting it between real reeds, weeds, and other organic life. From afar, it almost could've blended in as a plant, but up close it was very obviously man-made, much like the site itself.

I was happy with how this came out. Though I only had a loose idea of how I wanted it to fit into the environment when I started out, the actual process of making helped me find the intention of the work. I haven't worked with much metal before, so using the spot welder was a new experience, and the physical act of transforming and binding materials that were of organic origin and processed into something man-made got me thinking about the cycle of materials we use and how structured the binary of organic/industrial really is. Now, I don't think it is as rigid as I may have taken for granted.

In my next work, I want to improve on my idea generation phase of making. Though I'm glad I 'found' my intention here in freely creating first, I often can rush hastily into wanting to create something before I actually have a cohesive idea of what I want to do. Reflecting on this beforehand and taking it a bit more slowly (where I can afford to) might make it easier to avoid the mid-work roadblock of needing to figure out where I actually want something to end up. Then, if it does end up going in a different direction, that's okay too.

Post-Task Research

After completing this sculptural experiment, I wanted to look further into site-specific art, and how artists make the location of their practice essential to the work itself:

A Line Made by Walking (Richard Long, 1967).

Richard Long's practice primarily revolves around the alteration of and interaction with landscapes, such as the field in A Line Made by Walking. As the name suggests, his only intervention in constructing this work was to walk repeatedly in a line, leaving behind his own mark without adding or taking away from the existing environment (Schlitte, 2022, p. 512).

This concept particularly stood out to me after making my own sculptural form. Though I aimed for a similar goal to Long -- to alter a landscape and to create something that blends in from afar, while also implying something man-made up close -- I was interested by his ability to do so without the use of any material (or the reduction of the existing environment), neither industrial nor organic. I would like to see if I could try this myself in future and move beyond strictly thinking of form in terms of the materials I have available. The space around me can itself and alone be a form to work with.

Hydra's Head (Nancy Holt, 1974)

Nancy Holt, on the other hand, would directly intervene with areas she would pick specifically, creating forms that would emphasise or even alter the perception of natural phenomena. In Hydra's Head, a series of concrete pipes were buried in the ground and filled with water to create reflective pools in the rough formation of the Hydra constellation. It aims to blur the binary of site versus artwork by blending the two into one, forcing water into man-made structures set right by a naturally flowing river (Williams et al., 2015); even its surface is designed to reflect the stars and constellation that it is modelled after.

Here, I am intrigued by the realisation of imitation. So much of art is specifically designed to imitate: be that reality, collective fiction, imagination, etc. In sculpture, it is easy to find art that imitates reality in one-to-one representations of real forms and life; Holt, instead, chooses, yes, to imitate the reality of star formations, but in a way that also directly reflects the stars themselves. I find this duality of purpose very compelling conceptually. I too want to be able to create sculpture that both stands as a form of its own, as well as reflecting back something more familiar and real to a viewer. How can these two things be unified in one work?

References: (below the cut)

Task 1 – Spiralling in Nature

This week focused on Task 1, where we were challenged to create a site-responsive sculpture using a fixed palette of linear materials, including different gauges of wire and various types of string. The aim was to select a site and create an artwork that responded to and engaged with its environment. As part of the task, we explored Motley's concept of expanded sculpture, which considers sculpture as a flexible and experimental practice that extends beyond traditional materials, forms, and methods (Ellegood, 2009).

The artists who most influenced my approach were Ruth Asawa and David Oliveira. Asawa's suspended wire sculptures inspired me through their lightweight, transparent forms and intricate techniques of weaving, looping, and tying wire together to create organic, flowing structures (Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc., n.d.). In contrast, David Oliveira's sculptures resemble three-dimensional sketches, using wire to create expressive, figurative forms with a sense of movement and spontaneity (Blakeley, 2019). Both artists demonstrated how simple linear materials can be transformed into complex, dynamic sculptures that occupy and interact with space.

*Please hover over photos for expanded text*

21/7/26

References:

Blakeley, D. (2019, July 1). David Oliveira wire sculptor. ZoneOne Arts. https://zoneonearts.com.au/david-oliveira/

Ellegood, A. (2009). Motley Effort: Sculpture’s ever-expanding field.

Ethnically Raised

(Composited Gallery Image)

The Art of Materials

Thoughts & Ideation/Brainstorming/Conceptualising

The art of materials. When initially presented with the task to incorporate found objects into my sculpture I thought about items that hold significant value in my life. My parents own a lot of things; it is the Asian immigrant mindset of resource hoarding.

When my parents were more new to the country we/they had very little to live off. So, we kept nearly everything as a 'just in case.'

At this inception, my thought process spiraled into the complexities of my familial bonds. What items could be used to represent the personalities of both my mother and father? How can I represent the nuances when it comes to the connections and my relationship with my family? I had all these thoughts that layered together literally and figuratively.

Filipino culture:

Marriage is still illegal in the Philippines. The country is very set in their ways and value tradition. The problem I have found with this is the fact my parents have had a degrading marriage since I could remember. Of course, this affected me in a way that it would affect any young child, but my parents would justify their poor behaviour of staying together for the "sake of the kids." Quite frankly, I have always found it immature. They follow the laws of a country they no longer live in and have made both my brother and I suffer the consequences of a failing marriage throughout our childhoods. I wanted to portray this "connected disconnect" in my sculpture.

Immigrant Parents - I struggle with guilt and pressure all the time. I had always felt the need to prove myself to my family because I am the supposed "black sheep." I come from engineers, nurses, dentists, accountants, etc... my parents came to Australia so I would be able to do "more" in life, according to their definition of more. I want to do art. Art and teaching. That is currently what I am pursuing because as an artist I do not dream of labour but instead reason. I often feel guilty for "wasting" my opportunity to be "more," considering I always got the grades to become their doctor or lawyer. I wanted to show this pull in different directions in my sculpture.

Asian Stereotypes - Asian parents often feel like strangers. I do not doubt my love for my parents or their undevoted love for me, but I cannot recall a time where they have truly known me. Whether it be as mundane as not remembering an interest I have or as severe as forgetting my birthday, there has always been an unreasonable space between us. There is a common joke between Asians that your parents will bring you random things as a sign of thanks instead of out right telling you they love you. I wanted to use a combination of my parents items along with items found at an op shop, symbolic of feeling like a stranger to my own family but still holding that connection of us together.

Personal context:

I wanted to portray that familial relationships are not just black and white. My relationship with my family is certainly rocky, but I love them nonetheless. It is an unconditional love for family. I wanted to portray this in its most innocent form in my sculpture, by creating a foetus connected by a gold chain to both figures of my parents. I wanted to make this figurative foetus of myself out of items my parents had thought I would like. Not to say I am ungrateful for them, but the thought behind them are only a guess. Untouched by the world, yet conceived from love (which my parents had at one point) a baby symbolises innocence.

Comparison - Generally speaking, from my parents' generation there is a fixed, traditional mindset. I have been subjected to internalised misogyny and sexism throughout my entire life. Constantly compared to my brother, I have had to take on the roles of a woman, which in turn means I had to shoulder all of my parents' burdens. My brother has always had the luxury of never hearing any of it. Therefore, he has grown up to lack empathy for others and does not understand why I do not ignore our parents' issues. I am stuck in the middle of two parents trying to turn me against the other - while we live in the same household - all while they remain married. I do not know if it was too literal in a sense, but I wanted the figures of my parents facing opposite directions from each other.

Starting the Process/Experimentation

I started experimenting with metal frameworks to support all the belongings I wanted to use to build up my sculpture. My Initial Idea was to use a technique similar to the sculpture I made during Week 6 of Studio Workshop.

I would use a repetitive process of:

Basic wire framework -> fill with rubbish (in this case, my collection of found objects) -> bind with twine -> keep layering items and binding with twine till I get the desire volume of the shape I desire.

I experimented with making a vague model of a female torso, mapping out how to create a 3D foundation from my initial sketch. I tried not to focus on symmetry of perfectionism, instead getting the rough shape as I would be filling in this framework with objects later on. Utilising the spot-welder for this experiment was definitely helpful in reducing the amount of sculpting wire necessary to create the base. It also helped in easier manipulation of the wire into desired shapes to form the overall figure of a woman's torso.

Ultimately, I scrapped this idea entirely considering the logistics of how my chosen items would bind by twine. I really had to think realistically for my chosen method in creating my sculpture, and thinking back to my Week 6 sculpture, I was disappointed with end result. This is due to the how much twine was needed to secure items. I found myself having to wrap it around itself multiple times just to keep the sculpture together, which starting hiding the items I wanted to be seen. Considering this factor, I scrapped the idea because I wanted the objects to be seen as they hold the most significance to the artwork.

Progressing the Work

I still continued using sculpting wire as a basic armature or support for my two figures as it is a solid base and easily malleable.

Figure of my Mother:

Materials: Combination of various articles of clothing (blouses & shirts) pre-owned from op shops and my mother, Sculpting Wire, Hot Glue

Above are two pictures of my work in progress, creating rough wire armature for structure. Using the gathered clothes as a representation of my mother, I cut the fabric into into various lengths to wrap around the wire armature - still similar to the previous technique I was planning to use. Originally, I was planning to use my original technique of twine binding to avoid using standard forms of fixing, but I did not find a reason to prohibit myself from glue that can be easily hidden within the sculpture.

The idea of tightly wrapped fabric almost equivalates to suffocation. In the most 'nutshell' explanation, I ruminate the thought of what my mother could have been if she had never married (though the same could go for my father also). The clothes - which still faintly hold that nostalgic childhood scent of my mother and that miscellaneous op shop smell - represent a stable presence. Soft, warm, and comforting. I would use these words to describe both my mother and clothing. Though, clothing can also be suffocating under the wrong conditions. My mother quit her job in accounting when my father moved our family to Brisbane for a job proposition. Since then, she has been a stay-at-home mother. To me, the clothes also symbolise the domestic chores my mother shouldered when leaving her own life behind. I do not doubt her love for me, that is why she has sacrificed so much. But I do believe she was a happier woman before married life. Although she had always wanted children, I still carry an unknown guilt of having burdened her.

The fabric wrapped tightly is almost symbolic of an Egyptian mummy. It is believed that the mummification process was used to stop decay - preserving body and soul. I perceive it as a perseverance of unconditional love despite however unstable our relationship may be or become.

My mother will forever be a paradox to me, and the clothes also representing a paradox of such.

Any strings or offcuts of hot-glue were cut off before final photographs were taken.

Figure of my Father:

Materials: CD Cases & Discs, Various Cords/Wires, Metal Cutlery, Pens & Markers, Lightbulb, Porcelain & Glass, Sculpting Wire, Hot Glue, Super Glue

There were a lot more layers when it came to creating a sculpture of my father, in part of the fact I believe my relationship with him is the most complicated. A household with traditionally set beliefs and a daughter raised in a (mostly) progressive era was always bound to be complicated.

I started creating the sculpture similar to the sculpture of my mother. Using a very basic wire armature, I slotted items together to start with a torso, then hot glued them together. All items broken, wrapped beneath the cables and cords, I use the cords as a way to symbolise how my father uses the façade of work (engineering) to justify his often immature actions. -> I mostly repeated this process for the rest of the limbs and head, having to switch to super glue when the hot glue would not stick to the porcelain, plastic, or glass. It was a lot of trial and error, as well as waiting for something to fall apart before fixing it again with either sculpting wire or super glue.

To make a cable more secure I looped sculpting wire all around it so it would keep its structure. I had to fix the head of the sculpture using wire weaved through the torso as it was not able to be glued to anything else.

I gathered many items - both from his belongings and op shops - that would symbolise the enigma that is my father. Handy-man, 70's music taste, work-life balance, easily enraged, etc... I could list the many personality traits and aspects that make my father "dad," but I also chose these objects to symbolise that I only know him as dad. He is always working. I do not neglect to acknowledge he has worked hard to provide for my family, but in turn has left no time for family. My father is an engineer. He was always the person who had the most reservations about me pursuing a career in art.

My father's attitude hardened me as a person and made me more resilient. I may be quicker to anger than others - a bad habit I am in the midst of breaking - but the way in which he has treated me I have learnt to not tolerate nonsense from others.

Cold, calloused, sharp, and angry. As harsh as it is, those words come to mind when describing my father. Despite the warnings against using hazardous materials as part of the artwork (apologies), I felt it particularly necessary to portray my complex thoughts and feelings of my father. Aside from the knives and forks, the broken porcelain and glass held significant meaning to me. He has broken both the father's day glass and the porcelain bowl in a fit. Of course, he apologised eventually, and I had said I would fix the glass for him. I never got around to it and he never asked again. I suppose it is ironic to have a 'best dad in the world' shard of glass as the face of the sculpture considering the story behind it. It is symbolic of my relationship with him. I do not believe in being 'the best in the world' at anything, but he is still my father, and I love my father regardless.

Reflections: I did sustain minor cuts in making my sculpture, but I reflected on this. Tough love. That is what I have been raised with, especially with all the stereotypes surrounding Asian parents. The fact that my inanimate sculptures of my parents were still able to hurt me was ironic. Despite it all, I endured it to the end to finalise my project, reflective of unconditional love. I listen to my parents - and to the best of my abilities - help them regardless of our histories because they are family and I am not guilt-free from being hurtful to them either.

In Making Myself:

Still drawing from the fact my parents do not personally know me as much as I would like them to, I used a gold necklace they had once given me to bind their "hands" together and connect myself to the both of them. I only own silver jewelry. Regardless, the gold necklace stands in place for their wedding rings; rings that are supposed to connect them but feel more like a curse at this point.

I veered from my original idea of also creating the foetus of myself as a sculpture to instead make a 2D drawing. It is representative of my passion for art ever since I was able to pick up a pencil. I decided it worked better symbolically if I returned to my roots to create the foetus. Art is inherently me, which my parents seem to neglect when they keep suggesting that 'it is never too late to become a lawyer.'

Composition

I had made mistakes in making the sculptures top heavy, meaning I had to come up with a contraption to hang them up instead. I tied twine with tight tension between two chairs, tying the sculptures by their arms to the lines.

I then hung up a neutral coloured bed sheet behind the setup for my final photographs.

I faced the sculptures of my parents in opposite directions to each other to portray growing distance. They are posed to look like they are walking away from each other, in turn pulling me in both directions in the middle. The child they created together, trying to force beliefs onto me and turn me against the other.

Using Photoshop, I made a mockup composited image of my sculpture in a gallery space. I thought a gallery would be the most fitting environment considering my parents reservations on my choice to pursue art as a career.

My desired scale for the sculpture is 5'2 (~157cm), the exact height of both my parents. I feel there is a significant impact using a life-size scaled replica of my parents in these abstracted forms. It would be visually confronting.

Final Reflections & Title

Both of my parents willingly gave me items to use for my project. As much as I feel guilty for portraying them the way I have in this artwork, it is in part also the meaning of my sculpture. Familial relationships are complicated - they are rocky - they are rough - they make you feel like failure. But despite it all, there is an unconditional love that I can never rid of. I am grateful for my family and how far they have brought me. I would not be who I am without the childhood I had experienced. In turn, my final title for the artwork is Ethnically Raised, a play on words for 'ethically raised.' I pay homage to my parents despite our differences, acknowledging all the nuances that go into our relationships to each other.

This process proved invaluable, influencing not only my art making, which is my minor, but also enriching my design thinking, which ties directly into my major in architectural design.

I worked within a medium so familiar, and within this familiarity, I found comfort in the work and its anticipated outcome. Perhaps too comfortable, as the usual tension and perfectionism that characterises my architectural design process began to permeate my art practice – a space I had intended to keep alive with creative flow and joy, distinct from the high-tension, high-impact, and highly competitive nature of architecture.

Through the challenges encountered, I was profoundly humbled and, in the best way possible, stripped of this perfectionism. It served as a potent reminder of architecture's roots in artistic self-expression. I am reminded that all spaces carved by humans ultimately emulate the human journey, which, as we know, is far from perfect.

I am thrilled with the practical art-making skills I have gained, the relationships fostered, and the artistic doorways opened throughout this journey.

Completed 3D artwork:

Photoshopped into context:

The presentation provided the best opportunity to solidify and articulate the qualities that made this project so impactful for me. Reflecting on the process, there isn't much I would fundamentally change. The true strengths of this undertaking emerged not despite, but because of the faults encountered and the resolutions subsequently discovered.