Catriona Robertson
Im not sure of the title yet. I am not even sure if I am the artist anymore. I am a hoarder of my own work, mostly of sculpture that is not sellable which is most of the time. I feel attached to it, I made it with no means to sell it, so I made these out of paper-mache thinking they would not last, and then I would not feel guilty if I had to throw these away. I made them with detachment in mind but I still kept them regardless and still could not bring myself to throw these away, but then something happened. A collaboration with mice in my storage space. They started to chew the sculptures, and spit them out. I don't know if they were eating them, making a new home, cutting a door out hoping to find shelter, or just destroying them turning them to dust. Sometimes being a sculptor feels like you are a carcass hanging yourself out to dry, be picked at by the crows, or a piece of meat, making these objects for no promise of return. The funny thing is I think these looked better after the mice took over.
On another note, perhaps the chewed sculptures now lend themselves to the concrete cracks invisible in the city, buildings being eaten away and slowly eroded over time as humans consume and deplete resources, going beyond capacity the foundations break away on the edge of collapse and precarity. Perhaps theres a bit of a dystopian feel to these Kebab Towers as we destroy our own foundations even beneath the layers of concrete. These cracks can leave opportunities for weeds to grow in-between, I think perhaps thats where a lot of art operates too, between the cracks and the slippages, the unexpected encounters.
City Kebabs
