ERRATIC

Posted on Format Gallery

ERRATIC

 

The geological term erratic refers to a boulder that has been transported from its place of origin by the movement of a glacier and deposited at a different location, possibly many miles from its origin.

We first came across an image of a particular erratic boulder, at the Natural History Museum in London and were struck by its curious position elevated on three small supporting rocks. We set off to find it in Yorkshire and there, in an area with many rocks seemingly thrown about at random, was this rock on its limestone plinths.

Tailoring blue tarpaulin*, purchased from a local hardware store, to clothe the erratic, we were able to take temporary possession of it – but this was not a homespun homage to Christo and Jeanne Claude. In the rolling green Yorkshire landscape it appeared wrapped for transportation, ready to be relocated in some way. This was indeed the start of its journey, albeit through a digital image, to the famous Ritsurin garden in Takamatsu, Japan’s largest and most celebrated ‘daimyo strolling garden’.

Two works were made for the exhibition at the Sanuki Folk Craft Museum. Erratic, ran the length of one wall in a gallery dedicated to a local furniture designer. An image of the boulder moved at glacial speed along a narrow track calculated to travel the actual distance that the original erratic had been transported over the 6 weeks of the exhibition. The size of the image was meanwhile in proportion to the length of the track at a ratio of 11:1.

*Blue tarpaulin is widely used internationally for protecting objects from the weather, its colour signifying the weight and strength of the material. In the Takamatsu area there were numerous applications of this ubiquitous material and a great variety of sculptural forms created by it – at least 78 were worthy of documentation.

 

This project was funded by Tokyo University of the Arts, with special thanks to Professor O JUN, Associate Professor Yusuke Nishimura, Yoshinori Takakura, Kenta Kawagoe

ROCK

Posted on Format Gallery

ROCK

 

In 1981 Isamu Noguchi completed his largest, heaviest and most nomadic artwork, Thunder Rock. This 15-tonne granite sculpture travelled 3 times across the pacific in search of a home, after its original commissioner in the USA was unable to complete the purchase.
When Dunhill and O’Brien encountered the sculpture in Yorkshire on a cold windy day in March 2009 they were struck by the gap between Noguchi’s expressed intention (to make an elemental form transcending the banalities of daily life) and the logistics of repeatedly crating, shipping and storing the work, with its expanding carbon footprint and related paper trail. It seemed a particularly poignant example of one of the troublesome paradoxes that may be encountered when making sculpture.
In response to an invitation to make a temporary work for a park in Tokyo, Dunhill and O’Brien made a full-size transcription of Noguchi’s sculpture, based upon photographic documentation and written descriptions. Tailored in ‘distressed’ beige and cream leatherette to mimic the carved and un-carved surfaces of the granite, their Rock could be stowed as cabin luggage. Like an out-sized Pakamac or sports holdall it travelled with them Economy Class to Tokyo before a trip to visit Noguchi’s studio and quarry in Shikoku. Back in Tokyo and fully upholstered this ungainly object was cautiously wheeled through the back streets of Nishi Ogikubo on a convoluted route to avoid the steep hill between the studio and park, eventually reaching its month-long location at a picturesque spot overlooking the lake in Zempukuji Park.

 

MOUNTAIN OBJECT

Posted on Format Gallery

MOUNTAIN OBJECT

 

Inspired by Japanese mountain culture and traditions such as Fujizuka and Suiseki, Dunhill and O’Brien decided to use their residency at Youkobo Art Space in Tokyo as a research and development period, devising and making a series of prototype tools and accessories to make a ‘Mountain Object’.

 

The work shown at Youkobo Art Space gallery was the result of a physical and somewhat ritualistic process where they attempted to make a new sculpture together, entirely modelled and formed by tailor-made geta based on topographical information of two important mountain ranges in Japan.

The installation consisted of the geta and other bespoke implements used to make the work with a video of the process that evidenced the at times competitive way in which the form was shaped.

 

STONE APPRECIATION 2

Posted on Format Gallery

STONE APPRECIATION 2

 

Stone Appreciation 2 took as its subject six free standing and, to a greater or lesser extent, well known rocks: the Bowder Stone; the Idol Rock; the Toad Rock; the Chiding Stone; the Hitching Stone and the Big Stone at Bentham, all located in the North West and South East of England.

 

Having discovered these ‘celebrity’ rocks by purchasing postcards on the Internet, Dunhill and O’Brien have been preoccupied by a quest to visit and measure each of these, much photographed, landmarks.

 

Making even rudimentary measurements proved to be a tricky business. Videos capture the cumbersome choreography involved in negotiating each rock to establish basic proportions and dimensions. Meanwhile twin-modelled forms, reminiscent of portrait busts are presented, mounted on sculpture modelling stands that have been tailor-made for two artists to work in tandem.

 

Finally there are the postcards themselves, a collection of images of the six rocks in question, often from similar angles, they are at once a popularity index (90 of the Bowder Stone, only 6 of the Big Stone) and a record of an enduring fascination with these improbable, awkward and ungainly forms.

 

 

MOVING IMAGE

Posted on Format Gallery

MOVING IMAGE

A life size image of a boulder (with a tailored blue tarpaulin*) from the windblown Yorkshire Dales, UK, traverses the complex, pristine, manicured and historic devised landscape of the Ritsurin gardens, Takamatsu, Japan. The photographic print of the erratic rock, is seen mounted on a large stretcher, awkwardly manoeuvred along various paths and scenic routes in the daimyo strolling garden during the heat and humidity of typhoon season.

The video was presented among a collection of cabinets at the Sanuki Folk House Museum which marked the start and end of the circuitous route of this moving image.

* see the work Erratic

 

STONE APPRECIATION 1

Posted on Format Gallery

STONE APPRECIATION 1

It was a postcard of a painting made in 1868 by the romantic painter John Atkinson Grimshaw that prompted Dunhill and O’Brien’s initial interest in the Bowder Stone. More than the style of painting or the boulder itself however, it was the addition of a staircase leading to the top of the rock that caught their attention – turning an otherwise impressive natural phenomenon into a poignant architectural form, here was a rock posing as both a pulpit and viewing platform. In one of the most ‘unspoilt’ areas of England (the famous Lake District) there is a stone that has been domesticated, and designated as a tourist destination.

For their solo show at the Gallery Fleur in Kyoto, they presented a sculpture consisting of seventy metres of cotton calico formed like a dressmaker’s toile directly on the top section of the Bowder Stone. This detailed and tailored prototype, somewhat oversized for the gallery space, was supported by an elaborate construction of wooden props and sand bags over a paper pattern.

Meanwhile the Stone Appreciation Study Room, made with the participation of Kyoto Seika University’s Fine Art students involved a collection of images and objects relating to the cultural status of stones, from the Blarney Stone in Ireland, to the Torpedo Rock of Australia, the Balanced Rock of Colorado to Kyoto’s own Ryoanji rocks, in this case as a woven image on a cushion cover.

 

SCULPTOMATIC 2

Posted on Format Gallery

SCULPTOMATIC 2

This work was made for the Kunstvereniging Diepenheim in Diepenheim, Holland and shown in the same month as Sculptomatic 1. It employed locally sourced clay and responded to the particular architecture of this unusual purpose-built Sculpture Gallery.

The work involved a Dexion constructed ‘dumb waiter ‘lift used to transport the clay forms based on 500 images of sculptures with holes in, made by Dutch and UK participants, to an upper level of the gallery. There a motorised conveyor belt stretched across the space overhanging the main space somewhat like a diving board so that the clay forms once placed on it were transported to a point 5 metres above the ground floor gallery space where they dropped in to a large vitrine.

The exhibition, like Sculptomatic 1, comprised all of the working mechanisms and materials used to make the clay Sculpture and included a 2-hour video of the vitrine as the sculpture slowly formed along with a presentation of the photographs of each of the clay forms before their journey.


This project was made possible through funding by the Arts Council England, Kunstvereniging Diepenheim and the University of the West of England.

SCULPTOMATIC 1

Posted on Format Gallery

SCULPTOMATIC 1

 

The basic proposition of this complicated and convoluted work was to make a new clay sculpture that would be a ‘meeting place of different cultures and times in the history of sculpture’. The work developed from a preoccupation with the status of holes in sculpture and further elaborated a system intended to enable the avoidance of any interference of personal taste or the ‘hand of the artist’.

A crew of 20 participants were employed to make clay models at a rate of five per hour based on 500 images of sculptures, ranging from prehistoric ritual objects to contemporary artworks, selected because they had some form of hole in them. These images had been manipulated to remove any reference to scale, location or other contextual information.

Once modelled the freshly made clay forms were photographed before being placed on wooden trays that moved slowly around an inclined elevator. At a height of approximately five metres the forms dropped into a display case (at a rate of one every thirty seconds) where they accumulated and fused together to form the new Sculpture.

The final installation of the work included all of the materials and work spaces involved with a 4-hour video showing the vitrine with the sculpture slowly forming.

This project was made possible through funding by the Arts Council England, The James Hockey Gallery and the University of the West of England.

ROCK DRAWING

Posted on Format Gallery

ROCK DRAWING

 

Drawing in its widest sense is central to our practice. We use it as a way of instigating, egging on, planning, researching, measuring, disrupting, packing, administrating, transporting, problematising, de-problematising, installing and de-installing our work. In our attempts to collaborate drawing is employed to communicate ideas and test propositions. Sketches, diagrams, notes, manipulated photographs and objects of various kinds are shuttled back and forth between us as part of our ongoing negotiations. We tend to work together on three-dimensional drawings (models and studio ‘mock-ups’) in order to test things out and identify pitfalls. Drawing for us then, is usually a messy by-product of our thinking and making process, an easily overlooked record of disagreements, U-turns, practical solutions and instructions.

Rock Drawing comprises a number of elements (two-dimensional, three-dimensional and time based) produced at different stages in the process of making Rock, a work completed in 2009. Collectively these drawings form a narrative about Rock, while referring to a narrative about a sculpture by Isamu Noguchi.

When we came across the American/Japanese artist/designer’s largest and heaviest sculpture, Thunder Rock in March 2009, we were intrigued and concerned by its physical awkwardness and nomadic existence. Noguchi carved this seven-foot high, 15-tonne, granite boulder, quarried in Mure on the Japanese island of Shikoku, in 1981 in response to a commission for a plaza in Philadelphia. Its US based commissioner was unable to complete the purchase and it was returned to Japan, eventually travelling three times across the pacific in search of a viable home. It is currently in storage with no plans for a permanent location.

Sculpture is usually clearly in and of the world but often presented as having a different kind of presence. We have been pre-occupied by this particular paradox for some time; it is something that we find both poignant and troubling and Thunder Rock struck us as a vivid example of this. Noguchi’s stated intention was to reveal something elemental in the rock that might transcend the banalities of everyday life and commerce, however the logistics of repeatedly crating, shipping and storing the work, with its expanding carbon footprint and related paper trail also locates it as a weighty piece of commercial freight.

Our full size transcription of this sculpture, based upon memory, photographic documentation and written descriptions from the Internet, was less physically challenging. Tailored in ‘distressed’ beige and cream leatherette to match the carved and un-carved surfaces of the granite, our Rock proved to be the correct size and weight when folded to be stowed as cabin luggage. Like an out-sized Pakamac or sports holdall it travelled with us Economy Class to Tokyo before our trip to visit the quarry in Mure. Back in Tokyo and fully upholstered we cautiously wheeled this ungainly object through the back streets of Nishi Ogikubo to its temporary location in a picturesque spot overlooking the lake in Zempukuji Park. This convoluted journey, avoiding the steep hill between the studio and park was itself a physical drawing, ‘performed’ on a quiet Thursday in early November.

NEW JAPANESE OBJECT

Posted on Format Gallery

NEW JAPANESE OBJECT

 

The New Fuji in Meguro, a woodcut by Hiroshige Utagawa (1797-1858), depicts a small group of people standing on a Fuji shaped mound looking across a landscape at the distant Mountain. This image portrays one of over a thousand ‘Fujizuka’, made during the Edo period (1603 to 1868) in the Kanto region by groups of Fuji devotees known as Fuji-ko. At that time when women and the infirm were not permitted or able to climb the sacred mountain, these constructions were built for the local community, to simulate the experience of climbing the final and most sacred stage of Fuji.

 

Fujizuka were constructed of tonnes of lava rocks collected and transported from the volcano. Unlike the European landscape garden with picturesque elements, the Fujizuka is a humble, human-scale fragment, of this most potent symbol of Japan. Ranging from one to thirty metres high, each Fuji-ko group’s interpretation of the Mountain was specific and unique. Using the Tokyo Street Atlas and guidance from friends and strangers O’Brien located and visited thirty six of the fifty Fujizuka still existing in Tokyo. Incongruous and often obscured among high-rise offices and apartments each site was surveyed and photographed. Capturing detailed images of the imported lava rocks and other stones provided the raw material for a work developed later in London and in the residency studio in Tokyo in July 2014.

 

New Japanese Object is made from life size printed images of Fujizuka rocks mounted on thick cardboard and carefully positioned on a construction made from furniture and salvaged wood. A video documents the two artists working on the assembly of this armature of material gathered from their studio and apartment. Made without discussion, agreement or prior planning, the video reveals a creative process that resembles the circumnavigation of two workers carrying out often-repeated tasks. Meanwhile the flat-pack, ‘cardboard cut outs’, the antithesis of sculptural form, all but filled the remaining space.