When I look at art, I am always delighted at the audacity of the artist who includes a found image or an object in their work. It is indeed to work on dangerous ground effectively taking a representation of the past, a piece of history steeped in numerous possible narratives and perceptions and recontextualize it. Placing the object in a brave new world for our reflection. In the moment, it exists in this situation, alone and alien and yet embraced as if to be forgiven for its earlier intention and cradled in its new context, we can rebirth it with new meaning or indeed we can view it with suspicion and praise our evolution since its existence. Whatever reception it receives the artist is using this object in their palette. A time machine nestled within the work.
I treated myself to a book as a reward for my last submission in my Fine Art Degree. One hundred Sculptors of Tomorrow (Kurt Beers). It is eclectic, entrancing and just perfect for a graduate whose main interest is 3d objects. Having left behind in University some of the best machinery and tools, not to mention technicians to make work with, I began my journey into researching new materials to use in my work in the studio, particularly recycled materials.
Gabriele Beveridge, an artist born in Hong Kong and living in London, is represented in Beer’s book by three sculptures. Sugar Baby Mystic Mountain caught my eye as I leafed through because I immediately questioned the feminine image wondering how digital photography or Photoshop had reproduced what seemed like posters for women’s beauty products. Something that I personally felt uncomfortable with. I was drawn back to weaving through the seated workers receiving a makeover or redesigning their eyebrows in the department store on their lunch break. Why use this image? It now stood as an object and it literally faced me. The found poster is combined with hand blown glass and represented in a frame. The glass is shaped like a breast and half covers the models face but it also reminded me of the blown bull’s eyes found in in old door frames. Is that my mind looking for a different interpretation? This, the author describes as the artist’s mastery: her refusal to submit to an overtly sexualized meaning. Beers go on to explain how Beveridge is dealing with “how we use and exploit each other in the most urgent and ruthless way”. This work is brave, beautiful, and provocative. It is subtle enough to push the viewer to face their own preconceptions in the moment. At times we are fooled by art and confronted in a crude and assuming manner, but Beveridge has taken this initial impact and asked the viewer to reconsider how we use the images and so each other, indicating the inhuman in the human. This sculpture really isn’t what it is because to each of us it is probing our conscious and finding a new identity, it is fluid and has inspired me to think seriously about found objects in my own work.
Babs Smith Multidisciplinary Artist 