Collaborative Latex Work

After doing my initial latex floor experiments, Ed suggested we collaborate on a cast of our house's vestibule floor. This would combine his ideas of intervening in (and simultaneously highlighting) architectural spaces, and my exploration of surface. Ed had been looking at this particular area already and I was interested in it because of the patterns of the tiles. I also think it is a really curious space, because it is passed through many times a day but with very little attention given to it; its purpose is ambiguous, usually only accommodating the swing of the door and someone leaving or arriving, their mind intent on somewhere else. For my part of the experiment, the accumulated dirt is also worth thinking about - what it is, how it gets there, who it belongs to. Unlike other places in the house, the dirt is likely to come from outside, blowing in or being trodden through on people's shoes. Is it as close to the exterior of the house as possible, a passage way, an orifice. 

 

 

The latex had to be left to dry for two days, which created an obstruction that Ed and I consider to be part of the work. It is particularly relevant to his ideas, as it restricted movement in the space and changed how people moved through the area. I really like how the work relies on time to be created. As my interests are in making and process, I love the notion that a work can be temporal in its creation as well as its existence. Although the latex was spread across the floor, taking up the same area as when it had dried, it was not the work; time acted like a physical component in the work's completion. The product is also a documentation of the physical transformation; I suppose this is true for the majority of artworks, which are an accumulation of processes, but here this is consciously emphasised.

In my essay research, I came across a quote by art critic Holland Cotter, which in part describes this concept.

"Art is all tied up in time. Time is its subject and its substance. Art records time, measures it, manipulates it, invents it. Art also exists in time, is composed of it, is swallowed up in it. The idea of timeless art is sweet. But there is no "timeless." And the longer a piece of art outlives its time, the more clearly it speaks of ephemerality, what is or will be gone."

 

 

Peeling the latex film off the floor reminded me of a snake shedding its skin. There is definitely something inherently repulsive about the material in this state,, and I wonder it is to do with its similarity with skin and the body. As I found with the rope experiment, it was a process that could only be done at a certain pace dictated by the material, removing it any faster would have damaged the sheet.

I was enormously excited by the results we ended up with. We removed the skin in the morning when the sun was bright through the front door, and the latex held up to the light looked phenomenal, with undeniable visual connections with stained glass windows. I consider the work to be very, very beautiful, in spite of how repulsive the materials are; this is something that has been voiced by many other people as well, but I am finding it difficult to discover exactly what it is that makes one think this. In a crit, one person said it looked like an ancient relic, something innately beautiful but mysterious. Indeed many other people have found it hard to understand what they are looking at when they see the latex. This has been the case in previous works and is a characteristic I am pleased to put forward; mystery and surprise are powerful tools for sparking people's imaginations and subsequently having a strong reaction to the work and its true meaning/identity.

I am particularly delighted with the final product and how the architectural and geometric shapes of the tiles contrast with the near formlessness and organic qualities of the latex. Moreover, the lines set in the surface of the rubber are of dirt and grime, while the pattern they make up is from decorative tiles, put there to improve the look of the room. There are so many intriguing contradictions made with the material and semantic connotations. Our plans are now to try out different arrangements for the final presentation of the work and to photograph it properly with careful attention to the lighting.