For over a year now, I’ve been collecting bags of rubbish from my dentist. In one allotment there was half of a mold of someone’s mouth, I thought doubled, it would make a perfect vessel. I have a dark sense of humor so I quickly thought of the shape and idea of teeth as a grotesque ashtray.  However I thought if it was made in bronze, slick and shiny, it would have an abject attraction. After I made this, I read that Damien Hirst said that smoking shows a life cycle and that an ashtray is like a crematorium. I like that sentiment, even though I don’t entirely like him.

One of the latest images of the installation of Probe 1 The idea for the chair germinated from imagining a room made completely out of medical supplies. This room belonged to a lavish and morbidly fashionable woman who would be in a perpetual state of waiting. I imagine her chain smoking and putting the ashes out in a bronze ashtray made of teeth (an ashtray I’ve made and will post images of later).

As images of the posible options for a chair with a medical reference, I came across Erin Berry, an artist from Victoria BC, who made a chair covered in rubber gloves, titled “Feel Me Up”. Around the same time, Yayoi Kusama’s work was exhibited at Tate Britain. Her concept was based on the phallus. The idea of a probing, invasive chair has been and will be continuously adapted. My version has rendered the purpose of the chair unfit to use. An object existing in a Foucauldian heterotopia, a waiting room of sorts in a gallery space. The emphasis of the seat of the chair being covered in gloved hands, pokes, prods which invites and repels the sitter. The back of the chair in contrast, is bandaged, further making the viewer’s focus the probing hands.

(lmn)

n. pl. lu·mens or lu·mi·na (-m-n)

1. Anatomy The inner open space or cavity of a tubular organ, as of a blood vessel or an intestine.

A sneak preview of my newest series. I have been collecting used, expired and new medical supplies for the last six months and turning them into domestic sculptures. Many of these are near completion but I won’t put up the images of them until they’re finished. The next piece to be completed is a bronze ashtray modelled from teeth. Sounds strange and ironic? Perfect.

Titled Access-Sex, this series of photographs between Sarah Murray and I from 2007 look at disability and sexuality.