Carboard Artworks

Friday, 29 August 2008 15:00

The work of Chris Gilmour provokes surprise and amazement beyond what could appear to be a mere process of reproduction. In returning to the value of making and strongly emphasising it, these works reveal a process of understanding that lets us see everyday reality with new awareness and appreciation. Packaging cardboard is, by its very nature, intended to contain but it is then discarded. Gilmour, however, uses it to contain the work’s own identity and to highlight the displacement between the original object and the one made in cardboard. This displacement is marked by difference: his sculptures (and apart from the use of such a poor material, they conform to all the accepted precepts of sculpture) are not mere copies, but rather translations from life. The artist compares his sculptures to drawing, a way of seeing objects by observing and measuring them. There is a process of deconstruction, followed by the actual construction process. It is in this process of making, in an almost instantaneous and immediate construction, as if Gilmour was using a pencil on a piece of paper, that the subtlety of diversity is embodied. Gilmour’s work includes stunning virtuoso life-size objects, as well as cruder and more essential reproductions, sometimes left at a stage that calls to mind drafts or models. These are however all based on objects we have all experienced first hand- a typewriter, a car, a bicycle, a wheelchair. These objects are always carefully chosen for their evocative and conceptual power, for the potential for mnemonic narration that they contain.