BLOG Engaging with sculpture

My current sculptural studio practice has originated from the theme of abjection which arose in my recent Literature Review regarding two contemporary sculptors, whose work revealed the subject of the Abject Body: Azade Koker (whose haunting, faceless forms emanate disturbing disconnection) and Kiki Smith (a feminist whose work is strongly tied to the female body and powerfully reveal the suffering endured by women of the world). I am working on the theme of the Abject Body in my studio practice and towards my dissertation.

My current studio practice is sculptural. My tendency towards the three dimensional form arose with my previous use of mixed media, which opened up the possibility to make artwork with increasing physicality. I prefer to work with natural materials like clay, plaster, hessian, paper and wire, as they afford greater tactility and additional sensory qualities. Abject is a word that can occur in fairly common usage as in 'abject poverty' but it originally came from the Latin word 'abjectus' in the 15th century when it was used to mean cast off and rejected. Julia Kristeva, philosopher, in her book The Powers of Horror, coined this term to denote 'that which disturbs identity and order, that which threatens us by transgressing the boundaries between self and other' and it is mostly centred around the body and the foul fluids that emanate from within plus death, disease and deformity.