I made this pair of plaques for the show. The theme of ‘Inner/Outside’ reminded me of ‘Two Exercises’ by George Brecht, 1961. The original text is this: Consider an object. Call what is not the object “other”. Add to the object, from the “other”, another object, to form a new object and a new “other”. Repeat until there is no more “other”. Take a part from the object and add it to the “other”, to form a new object and a new “other”. Repeat until there is no more object.
I took this as a starting point but changed the text to suit the situation, and simplified it somewhat, becoming:
Take something from the inside, put it outside, do this until there’s no more inside.
Take something from the outside, bring it inside, do this until there’s no more outside.
The text was laser cut from acrylic. First from a purple piece, then a green one, as the first didn’t quite work. I had set up the file slightly wrong so that some of the layers had been compressed onto one. I was able to fix it in the workshop and I have learnt how to do it properly now, so I will be better next time.
I wanted to play with the idea of a confusion between inside and outside, so I forced some plastercine through the characters to make some sculptural forms. I think I may have been able to go further with this, so the technique is something I may come back to later. The circular shape makes sense to me because is it is the shape of an archetypal hole or vessel.
I mounted each object next two the door to the studio so that they could not be seen easily at the same time, but also because of the relationship between the parts of the exhibition inside the studio, and those outside.