Gerda Steiner & Jorg Lenzlinger

Brainforest - a booklet documentation of Steiner and Lenzlinger's sculptural installations including The Falling Garden (below), installed at the 50th Venice Bienalle (2003).

 

I'd kill to see this installation in the flesh, the scale is breathtaking and I imagine walking through the 'Falling Garden' would be magical. I'm ambitiously considering creating a similar suspended sculpture made of everyday, mundane objects or perhaps eggshells and other fragile materials, hoping to create a sentimental, nostalgic mood while also commenting on the inadequacy of keepsakes as a gateway to memory and experience: what we own does not necessarily compare to who we are and I believe objects and heirlooms should play a less important role in our idea of self than they do in today's age. Also a self-reflective observation on the ability of a photograph to capture truth - a photographic print is, after all, only a record of the exterior surface of someone or something. It gives limited insight into anything below the surface, just as memorabilia can only bring back so much of a person who has died, or a memory which has faded.

Cornelia Parker

"There are only a few images that are not forced to provide meaning, or have to go through the filter of a specific idea"

The shadows!! similar effect to a mirror - a self referent within the artwork, places the artist and the viewer within the artwork itself.

I would love to make a return to the sculpture this year and perhaps lean away from the sequence and work on a single, large sized and ambitious artwork. Parker's suspended sculptures are beautiful and also quite cold and unsentimental, which is topical in terms of my interest in nostalgia and the projected meaning of objects. I'd like to create a similar artwork using smashed up second-hand homewares, commenting on the fragility of our material safety nets and the impossibility of a mere object, whether it be a house, an heirloom or a piece of furniture, being a source of emotional comfort. It would also be interesting to include people within the sculpture, and dissect our human reactions to the violent treatment of keepsakes we almost consider sacred.