Final Piece for 'Collections' Project

For the first three project briefs, we were initiated into set pairs of the available workshops. The first two during 'Collections' were sculpture (primarily focused on plaster and clay) and metalwork. From either one (if not both) of these two workshops, I aimed to produce what would serve as the final major artwork to conclude the brief.

As a reference to the concept of collections, I had looked through a few museums and made sketches of a number of the objects on display (namely from the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London).
The final piece was to be based on the obersavtional drawings I made from the visits I made to these museums. More specifically, I 'borrowed' patterns from objects that were of interest to develop a way to incorportae them into my own design(s).

At first, I attempted to produce something from the sculpture workshop. Developing around the common design in collage artists or those centre their work around collections of material objects, I was going to produce a diorama of sorts, using a book as the main focus.

Although likely not necessary, I decided to create a book myself. Keeping it as simple in design as possible, the 'book' was made from card folded to resemble the cover, its pages were plain printing papers cut and folded to the appropriate dimensions.


The design for this was inspired by a small piece of text I wrote in sculpture workshop. As a class, we were set to write up something based on an object we saw in one of the museums (my being based on a book):

"A book of religious significance. Although written by man, its words are heralded as if bestowed upon from some divine deity. In reading its words, it is believed that one could understand all that there is and seek the truth in attaining paradise."

In addition to the text, Untitled (Medici Princess) by Joseph Cornell worked as a reference.

Marker pen sketch from original design for piece...

Although there was progress, the central book for the piece was mostly complete and the figurines (sculpted from clay) had been fired, the entire piece was ultimately unfinished. At the same time as I designing this piece, I began work from the metalworks workshop. It was from this piece in particular I chose to incorporate patterns from the objects I observed from the museums. The chosen patterns were then produced and/or reinterpretated into the art piece through some initial techniques I was introduced for the workshop.