Skinless Wings

I have finally had a chance to properly photograph the wings in their current state. They are complete apart from the cladding which I am soon to begin. This also means that the construction element of this project is almost at an end, after two years. I have actually decided to scrap the figure I was making to wear the wings, a decision brought on by a slow, creeping and largely ignored (because I am stubborn) shift im my personal tastes in art over the course of this project. The shift being that I dont really like sculptures of things very much, especially not of people. Most of the time they bore me and are so often used as nothing more than a platform upon which to display technical skill, which is fine but there has to more to art than skill. Skills can be learned, there are things which can’t and those things are interesting. I find more and more that I am drawn to sculptures that are things, not sculptures of things. For example, Conrad Shawcross‘ spinning light or rope-making machines, they are machines not representations of machines. I think it is this aspect of invention that interests me now.

So, instead of making a sculpture of a woman to bear my wings I will find a model to wear them and photograph the piece instead. I am much happier with this course as I was always uneasy about the fact that no matter how lifelike a sculpture could be, it would never be an actual person and in some way I feel that would suck the life out of all aspects of the work. I love the wings because they are just an object, made with materials that make no attempt to mimic anything else. They exist because I need them for something. They are functional. And they’re really fun to wear.

Anyway, enough unresolved theory, here they are