Slot 2019

Plywood and faux fur

Lydgia Clark’s Bichos (Creatures) (1960-66), hinged metal geometric sculptures that audiences could manipulate into their final forms in the gallery, influenced my own manipulable objects. Twist (2019) and Slot (2019) were conceived as playable oversized reinterpretations of popular 1980s toys. I wanted to explore a more open approach to touchable works; to let go of the idea of a final aesthetic redetermined by the artist, and give greater weight to multi-sensory encounters with my art objects over the visual. Following Clark, I use participation as a means to explore the embodied phenomenon of touch. Her approach is prescient of the contemporary theoretical interest in participatory art as a means of transferring political power to audiences. With help from Clark’s thinking, I view the primary role of participation in my work as facilitating exchanges of sensation and affect between bodies and objects, in order to heighten multiple senses.