CUBE - World of WearableArt Awards 2017

MAKING THE CUBE - WOW 2017

After making a huge latex vacuum cuboid 'The Machine' for a performance I was inspired to make something in the same vein that could be worn and moved around in. It’s so restrictive but the latex is so stretchy you have a lot of possibility for movement.

While watching 2016’s WOW I realised just how important the choreographers and performers are in regards to breathing life into the work. I wanted to make a piece that allowed them the most amount of freedom to create their own character. While the cuboid shapes are pretty simple, it’s quite a challenge to make something that can be vacuumed and moved around in without all the air escaping. 

TESTS

First try revealed major air leakage! Had to redesign how the latex of the cube interacts with the latex catsuit to make sure it was totally airtight!

INSPIration for CUBE - WOW 2017

The driving force behind CUBE was to try and represent how I feel in one of my latex vacuum pieces. There’s an overwhelming sense of restriction, yet as the latex gets tighter and more constricting I feel a kind of freedom. I get ideas from so many places, here’s a few images that really inspired me for CUBE.

1. Frank by Jim Woodring is one of my favorite comics. Woodring creates a world of cute creatures in bright colorful fun looking worlds. But there’s a dark and disturbing undercurrent and the cute creatures can often mutate into the most disturbing demons you’ve ever seen and the exciting landscapes can cruelly turn on the characters.

2. The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch has always disturbed and excited me. Painted around 1500, it has an unsettling timelessness. I love how it combines mutated organic and unnatural forms. Combining a human with a cube gave me similar feelings to this image.

3. Medieval Rangers by Roberto Masso, I stumbled on this book at a comic fair last year. It’s completely wild and I love it. It’s so brutal in places and gives me the same strange feelings I got about the Mercer religion parts in Philip K Dick’s ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric sheep’.

1 - 2.  Ray Harryhausen’s famous skeletons from Jason and the argonauts and his terrifying demons from Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. I’m inspired by everything Harryhausen did but these guys particularly for CUBE. There’s an exciting unstoppable villainy to them, human in shape but unnatural and frightening!

3. Still from Silent Running. The robots Huey, Dewey and Louie were the heart of this film for me. Their form was so unhuman like but the performers inside managed to create such memorable and emotional performances.

4. Terrahawks was my favorite Gerry Anderson show. Mainly because it was so weird!