Ed and I decided to work collaboratively as he was unsure of design ideas but keen on learning the process, and I was interested in producing a conceptual object but reluctant (very scared) about working with a new technique. I always seem to struggle with new ways of working, especially when they are technical and involve practice and precision; I am forever concerned that I am doing it wrong. Working collaboratively seemed to resolve both of our issues, as well as giving us a formal opportunity to create something together that we have both designed. We are always discussing each other's work and giving each other ideas but are yet to produce something together.
Experiencing the example medals was a great help in finding a concept. The medal seems like such a unique art form, which I hadn't encountered before and it seemed necessary to make the design intrinsic to the medium; it seemed too tenuous to use bronze if the message did not relate directly to the material. I was really struck by how heavy some of them felt, drawing my hand downwards by the palm. It was a delicious weight, comforting and grounding. I knew from this that the idea had to be about the properties of bronze. Inspired by Cornelia Parker's way of using statistics (length, weight etc.) in associating one thing with another, we began to look at significant numbers to do with the material... could the medal be the weight of a human heart, or skull? Perhaps Bronze has the same melting point as the Earth's core. How long would the medal need to be held before its temperature became that of the human body? The research was pretty futile as the statistics we found online were all very vague or didn't match each other. However all this searching provided us with the idea we are taking forward.
Ed discovered that both copper and tin (which make up the bronze alloy) are elements produced in supernovae. Stars seem to have an intrinsic poetry to them, perhaps because they are far away and mysterious, or because they look beautiful in the sky, or even because of humanity's historical relationship to them.
It seems necessary to understand my interpretation of the word 'poetic', as I use it so often in my work. Particularly significant synonyms include: romantic, dramatic, idyllic, imaginative. Something that is poetic, to me, touches on all these things; it appeals to the imagination, captures a sense of the Universe's power, is sentimental or idealistic, and is most commonly intensely beautiful. Recently I have been thinking about other things that are inherently poetic: death, birth, religion, the Universe... they are all very powerful concepts, extraordinary but also ubiquitous, age-old but endlessly evocative.
The death of a star is an incredibly poetic notion, which we wanted to call upon with our medal. By changing the viewer's knowledge of the material, it will inherit a vast new meaning; at first holding a medal largely similar to all the other's, the holder will end up with a piece of metal that traverses time and space, the remnants of an astronomical explosion. The design will be very simple: on one side an impression of a hand so that it fits into the palm when held, on the other the chemical formula 'CuSn4', and around the edge the words 'REMNANTS OF A SUPERNOVA FITTING COMFORTABLY IN THE PALM'. Including the impression of the palm is a suggestion of our place in the Universe, making something personal and particular to one human at one particular point in time, from elements that exist throughout the existence, that are recycled through time and space.
When researching the artist Katie Paterson, I found a quote about her work that capture's our intentions for the medal... "It appeals directly to our imaginations, revealing our abiding wonder at the Universe and all its possibilities, whilst also making us acutely aware of the limitations of our own mortality".
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