This week at the V&A began with a car journey from Manchester to London, to deliver the timber and plaster armature for my large head sculpture. I started out late after a hurriedly arranged appointment with the Indian visa office in Manchester, and arrived late afternoon following an interesting (albeit unplanned) tour of North West London. I’ve begun to model a third head, this one based on a small terracotta temple sculpture from Northern India.
Open studio day this week was the busiest yet, the highlight was a visit from first year ceramics students from Central/St. Martin’s, researching in the museum for a project on identity. They readily engaged with the Frankenstein project, adding some great portrait drawings to my rapidly expanding ‘archive’, and posing for a spectacular group photograph.
With my enthusiasm getting the better of my patience, I decide to have a try at constructing a 3-dimensional hybrid head using pressings from the moulds I’ve taken from the first two modelled heads. This proved to be a bit of a struggle, as there aren’t really enough options/variations to experiment with yet, but I did manage to produce something head-like with the fragmented qualities I’m looking for. Its not a great piece, but its given me the confidence that there is some real potential in this line of enquiry, and I will persevere with building a collection of modelled heads, to serve as a ceramic ‘body farm’ for the next composite head pieces.
