ANYWAY.
‘ANYWAY’ relief in green - made for display at the Other Art Fair - London 2022
ANYWAY: Interactive objects
For a long time I have been really interested in creating work that can be interacted with - whereby elements can be changed, played with or swapped out entirely. Enabling the ‘user’ to have authorship over the composition of the object or artwork presents an interesting design challenge, where essentially the bulk of the design work lies in the creation of the rules of the interaction instead of the aesthetic of the final object in itself.
My aim is to apply this approach to both functional objects as well as purely decorative relief pieces - creating modular pieces that follow a set of rules in terms of how each elements is pieced tother. This has led to the creation of the ongoing ANYWAY series, which explores the interactive concept using a variety of materials and fabrication techniques.
The ANYWAY relief series in painted cork, 3 x 3 configuration.
The ANYWAY cork relief series is the result of previous experimentation with carving geometric patterns into agglomerated cork sheets. By creating a series of geometries aligned to the same grid, each design occupying a 100mm x 100mm square, the cork blocks can be rearranged in multiple configurations by the user. Each block has a steel ring attached to the back which, when placed into the cork frame, receives a magnet to pull it into any square on the grid.
ANYWAY: Expanded Vessel
I used this approach when expanding the ANYWAY range into a homeware piece - the ANYWAY vessel, which again uses a modular geometric design whereby each element can be stacked together to form unique compositions. With the Vessel, each configuration functions as a vase, candle holder or a sculptural object in its own right.
I have developed two versions of the vessel, one carved from expanded cork and one cast in Jesmonite, utilising waste product from other machining operations in the workshop. Cork connectors mean that each stackable piece can be aligned in any orientation and glass vials mean that it can be used to display live stems when used as a vase.
More details on the full ANYWAY range can be found here.