Phi
This - ta dah - is Phi. Or rather a few parts of it… in the studio prior to the final coats of finish that gave it’s metallic sheen. I can’t show you much of a pic because it has yet to be displayed - as I would like it - in a place with good lighting. Soon…
The media is plaster and the illusion of rusty cast iron the result of lots of layers of oil paint. Needless to say Phi was many months in the making. I was mighty chuffed at the opening night of the exhibition when I watched a visitor taking a glance around and then give it a little tap - obviously trying to find out what it was made of. I couln’t resist introducing myself and offering an explanation. It turned out that he was an exhibitor too - a metal piece - a real one - and he a qualified boiler maker. 
The shape if it were fully assembled would be a rhombic triacontahedron. The rhombus is in the 5:8 or Golden Proportion - hence the name Phi.
Each of the rhombus was cast from a wooden mould which was laminated and carved - the tricky part being the 144° angles on the underside which when assembled form the triacontahedron. Accuracy was essential here - out by just a couple of degrees and Phi wouldn’t have worked.
So why isn’t Phi fully assembled? The honest answer being that it simply became too heavy for me to lift and turn over after the first 16 pieces. I took a long coffee break and a good look before calling for assistance. I didn’t call. I decided that I liked Phi better in pieces. Five in all. The one large one and then four other smaller groups. I could leave the viewer to decide whether this was a ruin or something had hatched or a kit in making…
The comment from the judges recognised that:
This work presents us with an industrial, weighty tessellated broken shell, providing a sense of consipicuous absence in the space it once contained. The allusions of its manufacture are hard to place - at once gothic and alien, organic or artificial, an article of aggression or protection? A resonant work, well done.
I really can’t wish for more than that. It’s a huge encouragement to continue making work that I really love. And it seems to find viewers who either love it too or think it odd. My work is like that - it seems to evoke a response - rarely a middle ground blah. In a perfect world Phi would find a home other than mine at the end of this exhibition - but that I expect is asking too much. Weighing in at around 40kg in total and I think (I didn’t measure him yet) around half a metre across he doesn’t exactly fit on the average mantlepiece…
Amanda
May 2nd, 2008 at 6:04 pm
[…] what’s the story with it. As Phi II - it’s obviously a next step on from Phi (which brought home the City of Melville prize last year). Hang on, why repeat myself, here’s […]