Untitled


Taisha Hutchison

The earliest known examples of labyrinths date from the northern European Bronze Age and from the Twelfth Dynasty in Ancient Egypt. A large scale maze made for humans awakens awareness of space, however, due to the miniature size of this maze, one is initially removed or alienated from physically interacting with the work. Although derived from a labyrinthine genre the pieces are not necessarily placed in a maze-like tightness. Placed on the ground the pieces reveal what a larger scale maze suppresses, the overview.

Twenty three pieces of cast bronze derived from an initial set of: a table, a chair and a simplified maze, of miniature proportions (rectangular "wall", 10 by 15 cm) arranged in groups of three or four. Cast in bronze, an intrinsically precious material which is easily melted down, using the lost wax method of casting.

Seeming rigid and "permanent", static in their singular, geometric dimensions, the forms are constructed, then altered, a "constant" however, is the chair which accompanies each "set".

Reading of the work is as dependent on the spatial arrangement of the pieces as it is on the objects present. Juxtaposition of, for example, a bronze right angle or "wall" to a right-angled column in a room, sets up a scene of confrontation, comparison, jarring in their difference of form, scale, and material.

The bronze is disguised by use of a dark patina (ebanol) which transforms the bronze pieces to a uniform black - until one touches the material the awareness of weight is subject to conjecture. The pieces playful character is halted with the realisation of their weight.

Through use of a substantial, weighty, "permanent" material like bronze in a variable arena, a tension arises between what is emphatically static, solid, dense and weighty, and the jump from form to form as they change and develop.

The "total" existence of the work is made up from multiple sources drawn from the mythological history of the maze, incorporated with the use, or misuse of the earliest known examples of labyrinth's, yet perhaps contesting the existence of this starting point, formally disrupting this.

It is the existence of the initial maze structure which establishes the possibility for derivations, "renovations" and simplifications of this form. The work marks various solutions to the physically objectified, the position of facing an empty space.