week 6: Aurora Robson's Installations

Aurora Robson is a Canadian American artist who works in sculpture, installation, painting and collage, focusing on themes related to the environment. Her work formally references recurring nightmares that she had as a child. The sculpture on the right is called Trichotomy. It was made in 2009 and is 48''x28''. It is made from plastic debris, aluminium rivets, tinted polycrylic and mica powder. I think Robson's work resembles sea creatures with long tentacles because of their unusual  shapes.

The colours she uses are quite vibrant, especially when they are lit up like  the bright yellow cylinder shape on the right. Even though most of her sculptures consist of monochrome shades, and have a simplistic form they look very busy and complex but at the same time quite elegant. If her sculptures included a mixture of bright colours it would have seemed too hectic and unstylish.
The sculpture to the right seems delicate because of the thin fragile form and light  pink and peach colours. This structure reminds me of a squid; the shapes are similar to the cephalopod, but this sculpture is a much lighter shade of pink.

The way it is photographed without any visible support seems as if it is floating and this conveys the idea that it is weightless.
The photo on the right is a gigantic vivid cylinder created from various types of recycled plastics. The way all the plastic parts are protruding from the cylindrical shape reminds me of the sun exploding ,a fiery comet with inner power.
. There is movement within the sculpture because of the continuous loops and patterns within the image.





MY CUP INSTALLATION

Many cups were collected to create this hanging sculpture. Each cup was cut into long ringlets which seem like  the tentacles of a jellyfish. The ringlets were cut at different lengths to give a sense of scale and movement. Each curl represents a tentacle. The texture of the cups have a very smooth and slippery appearance similar to the sea creature.
The broken CDs which are glued onto all the cups give the impression of poisonous tentacles; This is similar to the harmful tentacles of a Jellyfish. It was difficult smashing the CDs as they are very stiff; I tried to use my hands to bend and snap them which was dangerous as the pieces were sharp and would scatter everywhere, so I used scissors to cut them instead which was also challenging. There were safety issues which had to be carried out such as avoiding the sharp corners as you could easily cut yourself, and being aware of all the pieces which fell on the floor as this could also cut someone.

The way I photographed this image without strings to support it implies that the sculpture is floating; similar to Aurora Robson's creation of the peach coloured model. It isn't controlled by anything because there are no strings attached which connotes the idea of freedom. It seems weightless and delicate because of the thin opaque plastic swirls; Even though it seems pleasant to look at, the model is imitating a toxic and deadly sea creature. The CDs represent the millions of small stinging cells in a Jellyfish's tentacles, which are used to capture food by injecting toxin into their prey.
I could have improved this model by including small LED lights inside the top of the cups to enhance the colour of the plastic. For a more fascinating outcome, I could have included other types of recycled plastics which could have hung from the top of the cups; This would of given the sculpture more texture.

Further in my development I will focus on experimenting with other types of recycled plastics, and see which are the most effective when combined with lights. I will draw tracings of the sculpture images which i will be creating, to  see if they are strong enough to further develop for my final outcome.