Following on from
‘Constrictor’ (or ‘Lesser Love Constrictor’. I’m still not settled on a title
yet), ‘Release’ is the latest piece in my ‘Never let You Go’ series of
sculptures; a series in which I’ve been making hand-stitched (because
Lycra/Elastane is a bugger to sew using a sewing machine), stuffed, fabric
sausages that were initially each trapped within the tight embraces of mostly
elongated, rib cage-like, vine structures. However, ‘Release’ has diverged from
the rest of the sculptures in the series by being a piece that is about breaking
free from confinement.
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| 'Release', 2024, artist Wayne Chisnall |
When making the piece, I
intended the sausage element to appear as if it has burst out (as if from under
high pressure) from some device in which it had long been imprisoned. Now I
look at it, the thought of a gene emerging from an ancient and barnacle-encrusted
lamp comes to mind, but I don’t think that was part of my original intention. I
have been reading a lot of folk and fairy tales lately, so maybe that’s
colouring my perception.
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| 'Release' (detail), 2024, artist Wayne Chisnall |
The base of the sculpture is a piece of 50s or 60s car gearbox that I found on a recent holiday/material gathering expedition when an old school friend, Ian Armstrong, and I stayed at his family’s cottage on the Scottish Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides. Initially, I picked up the salt and weather-corroded chuck of metal because I loved its intrinsic sculptural qualities. Now I’m trying to work out if this component triggered the idea for the sculpture, or whether I partly formed the idea for the sculpture and then realised that the bit of machinery would make the idea work. Chicken or egg time, I guess!
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| 'Release', 2024, artist Wayne Chisnall |