Worked up some new textures for the second casting. Now starting to get a sense of the possible multitude of arms/tentacles. See my instagram for test images of the tentacles with disco fairy lights inside!
Exciting day – first cast off the new 150cm mould. I loved how the inverted cast looked like a mini-boobscape, it’s fantastic when the work has resonances with previous works. The cast was easily demoulded with just a little split at the base, and at 150cm has quite a presence. The texture is subtle and yet evocative. Now time to start making more – it takes a minimum of a week to make a cast, and each will be individualised along the way. Hoping to amass a large number of them to play around with install possibilities.
Over the last hot week or so I’ve made up the large (150cm) and small (50cm) Plasticine moulds – now to start painting on the latex layers for the casts. Reading ‘The Case Against Octopus Farming’ and watching videos of people drying octopus in the sun … despite, or because of, the wonderful things I have been reading about octopuses – I have ended up looking at how we exploit, use and consume these wonderful animals.
The program is out, the book ‘animaladies’ is printed and ready to be launched at Animaladies II. I’m really looking forward to speaking about the developments in my work – ‘bloodlines: tracing paths from bodies to biotechnologies’.
It’s an amazing line up and I’m really proud to be an invited speaker among these scholars.
A short artist profile on my work ‘Skin and flesh’ features in Matter Matters: Surfaces, Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, issue no. 43. Here’s some screen shots – the article can be freely downloaded here http://www.antennae.org.uk/
