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Elysium/Tartarus                                       Mixed media   1.2m x 1m

Night speeds by, And we, Aeneas, lose it in lamenting. Here comes the place where cleaves our way in twain. Thy road, the right, toward Pluto’s dwelling goes, And leads us to Elysium. But the left Speeds sinful souls to doom, and is their path To Tartarus th’ accurst. - Virgil, The Aeneid

For this work I feel the title is important. When developing the idea for the work I always had Elysium in mind, taking it from The Divine Comedy, with one panel a sort of paradise and the other purgatory. However, I feel the verse above from The Aeneid is more interesting and allows a shift in context in the work. When viewing the work, Elysium/Tartarus suggests the left white panel is Elysium and the other Tartarus. However, the verse suggests otherwise. In this context, the right panel is Elysium, which represents struggle and the belief of some form of paradise. The left, white panel is really Tartarus and represents the elite who through selfishness ignore and separate themselves from the struggle of the others. Although everything seems perfect, what is below the surface is beginning to show through ruts and cracks, highlighting the moralistic fragility of this perfect existence, and that they are the accursed. The truth is the title is a fabrication. I feel in this context the concept of disparity is achieved in a more satisfying way than I had originally planned.

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Untitled                                                                                                           Glass   280mm x 90mm x 20mm

This piece is based on the idea of a social parasite similar to the parasitic butterfly Niphanda fusca, which lays it’s eggs in the nests of other species such as ants. The ants are then fooled into looking after the caterpillar, and do so in preference to their young. The caterpillar does this by producing a scent to make the ants believe it is more important than their own offspring. The work seeks to represent this idea, replacing the caterpillar with the elite such as the monarchy, super-rich, etc, of today’s society. This is represented by the piece of tape protected in the glass, while the ordinary members of society are represented by the black enamel paint on the outside of the glass. The piece is also designed to call to mind a religious or delusional god-like self belief within the elite, with the tape placed high above the masses of the enamel. However, like the 3d plaster work an importance is placed on the materials the work is made from. The tape is encased in glass which can be and at any time, easily shattered. Also, the glass transparently illustrates the parasitic nature literally at the core of the work, that those on the outside are too blind to see.

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Untitled                                                                                                                 Mixed media  170mm x 90mm

This work is similar visually to the encaustic panel and also calls to mind Martin’s ‘The Great Day of His Wrath’. It shares the same concept as the encaustic piece.

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Untitled                                                                                                       Casting plaster   dimensions variable 

 This piece shares the conceptual ideas of the encaustic/plaster work. The pieces of plaster are rough, broken and scattered, but one side of the central sculpture is perfectly smooth and pristine. This represents the elite of society. Despite being part of the whole and made of the same material, there is a refusal of any interaction with the rest of the work. The irony is without the rough base to hold it up, it would collapse and shatter.

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Taking a used glass candle holder/jar, all the materials that were used in the artworks were collected to produce a piece:- Candle wax, encaustic wax, casting plaster, graphite powder and glass.

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A development produced in CP1 was an idea based on multiples, similar to Ai Weiwei’s work Sunflower Seeds. A large number of plaster pieces would be cast and spread across a floor area. The pieces would grouped together in small piles rather than covering the whole area in one mass. I decided that producing the piece would be too impracticable, so chose not to take it further. However, with the pieces of plaster that popped off the plasterboard, I decided to revisit the idea on a smaller scale, combining it with plaster sculpture made previously.

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Christian Boltanski                                                                                            No Man’s Land  2010

“No Man’s Land is a vision reminiscent of Gustav Doré’s famous illustrations of Dante’s Inferno that continues Boltanski’s exploration of humanity’s capacity for evil,” [...] “Boltanski himself compares the claw to ‘chance’ or life ‘as a game of dice.’” http://artdaily.com/news/38054/Christian-Boltanski-Creates-Monumental-New-Installation-Filling-Park-Avenue-Armory#.WQhhds8rKM8

Conceptually, the ideas for CP2 relate to those in Boltanski’s work:- disparities in resources, wealth, consumerism and capitalism, and the disinterest and arbitrariness at and of suffering. The wall of disused cookie tins introduces the idea of immigration, calling to mind the use of shipping containers in human trafficking.

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Opaque enamel applied to the other side of the glass piece.

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A base was made from plaster for the 3d piece.

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A glass piece was produced similar to the piece in CP1. A piece of tape was placed between sheets of glass and tack fused. Unfortunately, the tape was burned, but the piece was still usable. It was then painted with opaque enamel and fired.

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From the pieces of broken plaster a 3d work was produced. More plaster was spread on a plastic sheet and the broken pieces were placed in the wet plaster. Once the plaster dried a smooth, even surface was left because of the plastic, in contrast to the rough surface of the opposite side.

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A layer of fine casting plaster was applied to plasterboard. A 2nd layer was then applied, but almost immediately some parts began to pop off. This may possibly have been caused by an insufficient amount of time between the layers. However, an interesting surface was left as a result.

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Plaster joining tape embedded in wet plaster then removed when dried. If the plaster is too thick the tape cannot be removed.

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Graphite powder applied to wet plaster.

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Graphite powder applied to dried casting plaster.

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Casting plaster on plasterboard

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Jason Martin Untitled (Dry White) 2016  

Oil on aluminium 176 x 142 cm

Untitled (Payne’s Grey/ Ivory Black) 2016

Oil on aluminium 208 x 170 cm