Swallow And Piccinini - Material and Production Methods

Ricky Swallow Clockman 1998

Ricky Swallow’s Clockman - a sculpture made of plastruct, plastic and Letraset - was created by the artist in 1988. At only 9.4 X 4.6 X 2.5 centimetres, the figure has been scaled so that it is much tinier than reality. The use of plastruct infers that Swallow has incorporated plastic scale model parts ordered from the company Plastruct into his design. While Letraset is a company which “manufactures sheets of artwork elements”, the term “was often used to refer generically to sheets of dry transferable lettering of any brand” (Wikipedia, Letraset, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letraset, 8/4/08). I assume this material would have been used to create the numbers that were attached to the clock-face. An important feature of the final material, plastic, is that it is capable of being shaped. It appears most likely - after observing images of Clockman and researching the materials used - that Swallow would molded the man’s legs and feet out of plastic before attaching them to the plastruct clock-face on which he would have applied the Letraset numbers and hands.

Patricia Piccinini Undivided 2004

Patricia Piccinini created her sculpture Undivided - which depicts a peacefully sleeping child being embraced by an equally peaceful yet ultimately grotesque creature - in 2004. The colourful installation has been created using silicone, human hair, flannelette and mixed media to capture the details of the human and animal figures with such precision that they appear intensely real. I assume Piccinini shaped the figures out of silicone, before she dressed the animal in the human hair and the child in his flannelette pyjamas. Different construction methods would have been necessary for the bed, which I presume from the image is made from wood. Sewing would also have been required to construct the sheets, pyjamas and teddy bear. Considering the sculpture is only 74 X 101 X 127 centimetres, however, the production of these different elements would likely require less space than their non-scaled equivalents.