The work was original designed for the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition, at Cottesloe Beach, 6 - 23 March 2015, where it was seen by over 200,000 people.
Prior to this it also appeared in the Here & Now 14: Contemporary West Australian Ceramics exhibition, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, at the University of Western Australia, 25 July - 27 Sept 2014.
This webpage was reproduced in an abridged form in Hay, G., (2014) iHeads / stone phone cairns, Pyre, Ceramic Arts Association of Western Australian Journal, September 2014, p11-16.
Prior to this it also appeared in the Here & Now 14: Contemporary West Australian Ceramics exhibition, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, at the University of Western Australia, 25 July - 27 Sept 2014.
This webpage was reproduced in an abridged form in Hay, G., (2014) iHeads / stone phone cairns, Pyre, Ceramic Arts Association of Western Australian Journal, September 2014, p11-16.
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The Kiss / iHeads / Stone Phone Cairns*
Confronted with rising anxiety over the pace of technology and digital disruption, I look back, to see how we first shaped our material world to suit our social and communication patterns. Before digital devices, even before paper, we wrote on handfuls of soft clay. These clay cuneiform tablets were small and light enough to be handheld and carried. While researching this project I collected images of clay cuneiform tablets: http://www.pinterest.com/grahamhayart/cuneiforms/. Wikipedia provides a good summary of information on them, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_tablet and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform. Since many cuneiform tablets were dated by the year, month and day, we know that they were made 3,500 to 4,000 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of these first tablets still survive today, in the Middle East, and can still be read. We passed them hand to hand, wiped them clean, locked (folded over with text on the inside and dried/fired) and even sent them great distances. Like smart devices today they recorded our personal notes, gossip, food recipes, financial transactions, legends, literary works, dictionaries, prayers, omens, astronomical recordings, diplomatic messages, and even love poems. Given that written languages were originally pictorial, there was no need for the present day separation between image and text. Collections of these clay documents made up the very first archives. They were at the root of first libraries. The only difference now, is that we can instantaneously access similar modern "libraries" via our modern devices. So our contemporary devices are not that original, but merely an extension of 3,500 to 4,000 year old technology. Construction: As my pile of handmade phones grew higher, some sort of frame to hold them together was required. Little did I know the structural and visual problems I would create for myself. Initially I soaked them to soften them (easy with paper clay), drilled two holes in each, and then threaded them onto vertical wires. As the scale of the work increased, I realised that they required something even more substantial than wire to hold them up. So I ordered sixty four, 10 mm diameter threaded stainless steel rods, which I cut down to two metre lengths and inserted into the galvanised steel bases. These bases had been recycled from other sculptures. The clay phones/cuneiforms were again soaked to soften, and re-drilled with larger holes. Many did not survive this process, plus as I stacked the unfired clay higher and higher, the thinner ones at the bottom also broke. This was despite them being paper clay (reinforced with the paper fires-like steel in cement) rather than more brittle conventional clay. By October 2012 my ideas had evolved: To suggest a conversation, I decided to build two circle towers of clay tablets. Also, I mused about my own primary relationships, and researched how previously sculptors have represented human relationships. See an online record of images collected here. Eventually I focused upon Francesca da Rimini/The Kiss by Rodin (1882). So I transferring two relief faces diagonally onto the growing pillars of clay phones. With the faces on a 45 degree angle, and being only relief, the task of building them up, one 2cm layer at a time became extremely challenging. Many smaller models later, I realised that I could not accurately build the forms layer by single layer. To reduce this building error and ensure that each facial feature was of the correct scale and alignment, and positioned correctly, I build five more smaller works. I also drew up a large 2m by 6m plan which proved essential during the final assembly. Build, slice and dice:I then switched to building whole sections, such as a mouth, nose or eye on 100-150 kg one metre high walls of soft paper clay. At this stage in early 2013 independent curator Emma Mahanay, on behalf of the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, at the University of Western Australia, selected these works for the future Here&Now14 exhibition. The pace of my building quickened. Vertical holes were drilled into each completed section of facial features, before the section were horizontally and then vertically diced into phone size sections, their lateral surface detailed to mimic phone controls. Each phone was numbered as the sequence and location of each unique clay tablet/cuneiform was critical. Once dried, the individual phone sections were glazed using predominately recycled glaze slops (from studio classes), and then single fired. Unfortunately building facial features 20 times larger than actual was challenging. So my participation in the 2013 Florence Biennial was fortuitous, enabling me to view in person Michaelangelo and other Renaissance italian sculptor's representation of the human face on an angle. Despite this experience, the first of each of my own attempts to make the first mouth and nose proved inadequate, and were discarded. Over 100 kg of unfired clay and some of the 200+ fired phones were salvaged and used to build other sections of the final pieces. Progress was slow as technical and aesthetic problems often only emerged upon contemplation of completed sections. As the works progressed upwards, it was a “three steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, three steps back” process. This was because of the overlapping nature of the stacked phones, broken or visually offending items could only be removed after first removing the “V” wedge of other phones above them, and then re-inserting them all in the correct sequence. Also, because of the compounding kilograms weight of all the phones above each phone, I had to dismantle and reassemble the complete work, in order to insert two small nylon washers between each phone, on the stainless steel rods. This small thing also added over $1,000 to the cost of the project, as well as doubled the time for every progressive build and rebuild of each section. A number of things happen as I made the thousands of clay phones. My own phone changed, and so I adjusted what was making, then the relief sections required that the parts morph away from the phone shape and scale. Also, I begun to soften the iPhones towards a loose shape as worked to make the whole work less mechanical. In recognition of the cuneiforms tablets I also introduced great variety of colour when decorating them, adding some randomness to the overall work. Upon final completion nearly three years late, I look at the works with new eyes, and begin to see them as singular object, as cairns of stone phones. One Scottish story about stone cairns I found particularly interesting, each man going to battle would place one stone on a pile, and remove it after battle. The remaining stone cairns became a way to honour those that never returned. I visited a similar site in Lithuania, where they originally placed crosses in memory of fallen resistance fighters against the Russian invaders. Over time it became a site for anyone to do the same in memory of lost loved ones. There is a sense of ancient, dark history when looking at the work that I am now only beginning to tease out. Do feel free to see more or leave your own observations or comments via facebook.com/GrahamHayArt The above webpage was reproduced in an abridged form in Hay, G., (2014) iHeads / stone phone cairns, Pyre, Ceramic Arts Association of Western Australian Journal, September 2014, p11-16.
Other media reviews/stories on the work: Lyons, S., Review: Here&Now14, ArtLink, 34, 4 Wilson , L., Expansive Visions Drawn From the Land and Reaching Beyond, Ceramics Now Magazine, 3, Artbeat 92.1 RTRFM Radio, 5 September 11am. Gallery Watch, West TV (Channel 44), WA, 31 Aug, 4-4:30pm * The work was original designed for the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition, at Cottesloe Beach, 6 - 23 March 2015. Prior to this it also appeared in the Here & Now 14: Contemporary West Australian Ceramics exhibition, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, at the University of Western Australia, 25 July - 27 Sept 2014. Over that time it's name was changed to better reflect the artists intent. The work was seen by approximately 200,000 people at Sculpture by the Sea. Studio photo diary: http://instagram.com/grahamhayart blog discussion of the social foundations of sculpture |
Photo: Kevin Gordon
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