Project Development

Initial ideas

I was interested in exploring the imagery of childhood toys. I was fascinated by the idea of how our memories of them change over time and how our whole memory of times past is fluid and changeable. How we partly imagine the past rather than have a fixed recall of how it was. Our perception of everything changes as we grow up. As kids we think the adult world is full of freedom and adventure. But then as we grow up we have this dream broken by the reality of responsibility and hum drum existence. I wanted to work with images and forms that represent iconic toys. I decided to work with classic dolls head rather than Barbie or more contemporary toys like for example computer games. 

 Project Development

Inspired by the work by Paula Rego and Johnson Tsang, I settled on the idea of making copies of one of my own dolls from my childhood. I combined the concepts behind Rego's (manipulating childhood fairy tales) and Tsang's (multiple sculptures of baby heads) work to achieve this. 

I started by making a mould of my own doll, and started making replicas of her out of white earthenware slip clay. I liked the idea of making copies / clones of the same head as this tied in my idea of anonymity within groups that I explored earlier. Unlike Tsang, each face was void of emotion, a blank face staring back at you. I liked this as the idea because as children, we give everything, even inanimate objects like dolls emotions and feelings. We personify everything to create an attachment, so in my work I sought to do the opposite. 

I made around 15 doll heads in total, each identical except for the coloured glaze I put on them. This would then make sure that when the viewer looked at the finished piece, they would see the collection as a whole and not the individual head until they looked closer. They would only possess an identity when the viewer gave them one, they could be whatever the viewer wanted them to be in the moment. 

I was pleased with these forms. The production quality and glaze effects had a high quality. The challenge is what to do with these beyond being high spec copies. 

Each glaze has different connotations for people to interpret. Whilst I am primarily interested in working with groupings to generate meanings for my art.

 

I really like the dark green head but it looks very unnatural and ornamental and prevents it from blending in and gives it a sense personality. The same applies to the brown and mustard head. This also has a sense of decay like a rotten apple. This makes them too distinctive for me. I like the idea of them being anonymous in themselves, but form meaning by placement and combination with other materials, (possibly ready-mades) and contexts to build more potential associations and interpretations for others to draw upon.

Having decided upon neutral glazes. I have made a series repeat casts. The challenge is now to configure these.