©Hallie Primus
REGENERATE SCULPTURE
Regenerate sculpture embodies an ongoing cycle of creative energy that is activated through material practice.
My practice builds on what is already there: materially and from within my body and psyche. For example, my materials have nearly all been given, borrowed, or salvaged. Being able to recycle unfired clay by hand, reconfigure steel tube-clamp, and incorporate found objects frees me to experiment without worrying about waste.
My sculptural forms emerge out of a struggle between bodily gesture and material structure. When wet clay is pressed against a steel armature, each material resists the other. While steel provides axis and angle, wet clay seeks gravity and collapse. When stretched across a steel armature, the clay contracts, stretches and breaks as it dries. Steel joints relax under the weight of their limbs, until the contracting clay imposes a new force upon them. In pushing, pressing, stretching, reaching and compensating, my body becomes a third part of the medium, contributing to but never quite determining the character of the form.
My interest in structure and gesture has history. Although initially inspired by the act of expressive mark-making, I soon turned to what I percieved as the academic validity of classical composition. Teaching art in London state schools, where promoting creativity has been a key concern, the dynamic between institution and intuition came into focus. Lacan’s Psychoanalytical Discourses then provided a framework for my master's investigation into the operation of authority and agency (as observed through the recording of an event I staged in my classroom). In theorising the structure of the unconscious, Lacan invented objet petit a: the real but elusive, perhaps suppressed, object of desire. Through my sculptural process I have come to enjoy objet petit a as a characterful agent who sometimes shows up in my imagination and work.
My dad, in jest, used to call us children 'degenerates' so, in describing my art as regenerate sculpture, I reference the term affectionately. If, in art historical terms, 'degenerate' names what authority excludes, then regenerate sculpture is that which reclaims excluded energy through making.