House Boxes – ‘Portraits Of The Mind’
When I was a child, businesses and corporations began buying up rows and rows of terrace houses in the vicinity I lived to build factories and storage facilities on the land on which they stood. In haste, previous tenants quickly sold up and moved on often leaving behind possessions waiting to be explored.
As a child fascinated by what I could discover, I would enter these empty homes, often without boarding or security allowing me unfettered access to absorb the potential troves within – they were ‘moments vitrified in time’: furniture, clothing and many other chattels and adornments just left abandoned. I found this exhilarating; like having a direct view into the thoughts and lives of former inhabitants via the objects they kept.
I felt as though met these previous tenants, without introduction, a sort of transcendental encounter through the remnants left behind in the wake of their quick departure. As such, my Box Sculptures have much of their roots in this early experience and form the basis of my past and future projects.
I have been making box constructions employing my carpentry skills, frequently utilising recycled wood and allowing this box construction to become a vehicle to carry a myriad of paraphernalia/flotsam and jetsam. I give these objects an autobiographical interpretation and compose them into Lilliputian Rooms which I refer to as ‘Portraits of The Mind’.
The spectator can ‘read’ the 3D narrative in the box’s interior as if the object trouvė were words. The work is often constructed into boxes starting from about 1 foot to 4 feet high. My later training as an actress has also helped make these box structures into miniature stages.
Frequently the boxes about my and other people’s mental portraits are related to personal experiences, or based on the mind of the person I am creating the portrait of, and I infuse them with what I consider to be suitable colours to capture the emotion of the memories, feelings etc.
These box sculptures are intended to capture drama, or a moment vitrified in time and space in a drama. The stillness in a box sculpture can capture a memory sans movement in the work. As in a painting and other art forms, capturing for example times long past in the very configuration of the selected objects that narrate the 3D tale from any period chosen. The works are also time capsules as they frequently incorporate objects from the current times we live, as well as relicts from the past.
The work is very existential in the way it relies on what I find in skips, and what people donate to me from their discarded objects and in this way the work becomes many people’s 3D dossiers. I then place the objects in transparent bags and label them; not de similar to the way an archaeologist archives their discoveries.
The boxes may extend outside of themselves creating and demanding a space they occupy in their demarcation; this demarcation is alternating because the work invites the spectator to approach the boxes and peer inside, but, the work also requests that the spectator takes varied viewpoints at a distance as the work reveals different aspects of itself depending on where the viewer is located, and therefore, there is no delimiting way to take in the work.
In my research books, that I have handmade, based originally and loosely on ancient Greek books, I have included these image interpretations and often I see these books as image dictionaries where I keep the explanations of what objects and images mean to me autobiographically. I have produced about 35 of these books of recordings of object interpretations. For example: As a child, when I witnessed the weather, if it snowed, it was God’s dandruff, scarecrow – Jesus on the cross.
Possibly, bantam room interiors like these boxes are a way of having some control over my World as I always felt I was permitted no agency to do what I needed when I was growing up and beyond. I felt sequestered and therefore just lived in my head, one reason for creating the ongoing series of ‘The Portraits of The Mind’. They are also claustrophobic as its a condition I have suffered with for many years, and I feel my head is congested. The boxes are intended to capture the residual energy of the inhabitants, there are no people in them as i feel the loneliness of the void strongly.
I plan to continue developing the execution of portraits of other people’s minds too like a portrait painter captures the physiognomy of a person I would like to capture the portrait of the mind by interviewing people and recording their stories through a particular shaped box, that I feel suits their bespoke story and personality, and that will act as the vehicle for the objects within it that narrate their 3D tale. The result of a box portrait will be different each time the same person sits for me, that is: where are they at this stage of their life? How much older are they now? And what current flotsam and jetsam are discarded in the World at the time of executing the box portrait? For example, some of the biggest waste products today are all things plastic and obsolete technology and as I have said the boxes are like time capsules as they incorporate these present trends. I like to think of it as a possible alternative psychological therapy.
The boxes also capture the passage of time sequence, for example, I am currently working on a piece which is based on some church ruins; the church has no roof and snow is falling. The leaves have fallen from the trees after the snow has stopped to inform you of this fact, whereas, if the leaves had snow on them, you would know they were on the ground during the snowfall. The same applies to footprints and other ephemeral and non-ephemeral references. This has the feel of an investigative procedure to it. This in a way works out time lapsing, for me personally in a visual way.
Peering inside a box piece is like staring into someone’s memory bank, like the writer Dennis Potter’s Cold Lazarus
I designed these pieces that have their own independent lighting to be displayed in two different lighting conditions.
Displaying Box Sculptures in Two Different Lighting Conditions:
Chiaroscuro; is the technique of using light and shade in pictorial representation. As mentioned, I would like to display work in two different lighting conditions this tells a story from the light and dark created via high lights these lighting methods create. There is a feeling of mysteriousness and numen activity when the boxes are displayed in a dark or dimly lit room while the incandescent lighting of the box illuminates. It is also a very theatrical experience and narrates the two sides of a character’s mind: The light and dark side. Silhouettes and shadows are released.