This week I have started works on my final major project degree show piece, firstly, Casting my entire body (minus head) getting ready to make this into a negative space to be apart of my degree show installation! Really excited about my new ideas surrounding my degree show piece! I think they’ll come together really well and hopefully I’ll be able to make a lot more progress this week!
One of the biggest inspirations was one of Ana Mendieta’s ‘Siluetas’ where the female body is dug and carved into sand on a beach, it is then flooded with water and slowly washed away. One of the elements of the final piece is quite an intimate one, one where the body is exposed fully and put on display. Using skin safe plaster of Paris casting strips, a cast was made of the female form. Laid on the floor for almost three hours completely still, trying to conserve each breath and make them last as to not move the setting cast out of place. The cast began at the toes and worked up until the neck. This was then removed and laid to set overnight before more plaster would be added to solidify the piece. This process was quite extraordinary and extremely reflective. The plaster needed water to become soft and malleable and then it used the body heat to help it set. This almost symbiotic relationship within the materials has recently been encouraged. The materials become an extension of the body, and the body becomes the conductor of energy they need to be able to be brought to life and to become something more than just a material, but a material matter. The position of the body was also quite important, different to Mendieta’s exploration into body positions, the cradling position was used, thus making a suggestion towards a more vulnerable state, a relaxed and exposed nature that shows the body as wanting to protect its vital parts, as already explained and explored in stage two. After the cast was made, it was made into a more solid object using proper casting plaster with an added plaster polymer to make it water and weatherproof. The casts have been flipped and used in reverse to create a negative space in the installation that will collect and hold water, a true ‘Body of Water’. To help strengthen and waterproof the body casts, a couple of layers of Jesmonite were painted on the inside to give it a more rock finish.