woollen blanket house
.
This woollen house was part of my exhibition These are the things that hold me here ( a house, a vessel, a shell, a ring) held at Craft Victoria in 2004. It has been in a box in my laundry since then. Recently I took it out to show someone and it ended up on top of my bookcase in the hallway, where it seems to have stayed. It is made from an old army blanket and has a long tail of thread coming out of a side pocket.
I guess that reflects a principle of all my work: I never show a human being or whole body; instead, I depict objects related to the person or a part of the body. You could say the spectator himself supplies the whole body in question. Usually the object is something the spectator could wear, use, eat or relate his body to.
Claes Oldenburg
In my sculpture, its not an image I'm seeking, it's not an idea. My goal is to re-live a past emotion. My art is an exorcism, and beauty is something I never talk about. My sculpture allows me to re-experience fear, to give it a physicality, so that I am able to hack away at it. I am saying in my sculpture today what I could not make out in the past. It allows me to re-experience the past, to see the past in its objective and realistic proportions...
...Since the fears of the past are connected with the functions of the body, they re-appear through the body. For me, sculpture is the body. My body is my sculpture.
.