Wash your hands
This is another group project we were given a view days for, involving in researching artist Brian Jungen’s piece Shapeshifter (2000), and then making our own piece on minimalism and autonomy.
I find group work challenging - even without the difficulties of video calling and being all over Europe (group members spread from Glasgow/Liverpool/York/Paris). I enjoy bouncing ideas off people but I’m independent when it comes to making work - so this work where we were each instructed to make a sculpture but then only choose one to show as a group - means I have to really step back from control.
However I found with this group, a struggle to have an idea and get on the right track, so I ended up being a little bossy anyway and allagating research areas and coming up with a sculpture to make. - and in the end group members actually thanked me for “managing the group” and “getting things moving”.
The idea I came up with, with the material of SOAP, was to make my own but making it dangerous and unusable.
Our material was soap.
In the presentation, I spoke about the piece we made:
For our sculpture we made bars of soap that are completely unusable. One contains razorblades, and the other rose thorns.
I initially gathered together ingredients to ‘deconstruct’ the material. Including lye, ash and essential oils, but then I realised making from scratch would take too long for the project timeframe – I also wanted to avoid using animal fat, which most recipes included. So, I decided on melting down commercial soap.
First I tried melting down some cheap soap, but it expanded and was ruined (you can see it in the right of the picture). So then I tried Pears, this soap is translucent and has the advantage of showing the objects inside.
Our soap, as soon as it is used, would cut your hands. This makes the soap autonomous, as it can only exist as itself, it is not to be used as for its purpose.
The razor blades are more obvious and visible – alerting you to the danger, whereas the thorns are a natural material and ape ‘designer’ soaps you might see in posh hotels – so add an edge of ambiguity. ‘Surely there aren’t thorns in that soap?!’
The contrast between the soft, comforting, cleansing idea of soap, and sharp deadly razor blades, was intended to mirror the contrast in Jungen’s work, who made natural beautiful whales out of plastic chairs.
Soap is an interesting material to be given, because unlike many of the other materials, it is man-made, chemical, can hold many forms and be made of different materials. Meaning, we had a range of textures and materials to chose from within the category of soap – liquid, foam, solid, translucent, natural handmade soap using ash and animal fat.
Soap rather describes ‘use & purpose’ rather than dictating the material itself.
Soap also has a complex history, including in advertising, materials and class. The Pears soap we used in the sculpture has an interesting history as well: Pears used its product as a sign of the prevailing European concept of the "civilising mission" of empire and trade. Also using Lillie Langtry, famous for her “ivory complexion” to endorse it.
The scale of our sculpture is small, the size of a normal hand soap, and is slippery to hold. We imagine it displayed in a gallery on a classic household sink, or perhaps in the middle of a sink, with the water dripping on it so the continents are gradually revealed.
