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Alice Lang
Artist Statement
My practice investigates possibilities for sewn sculpture to explore and complicate the relationships between concepts of the decorative and the grotesque. My work is materially driven and usually involves an obsessive compulsive process of making hundreds of individually stuffed fabric forms and then sewing them together in an intuitive manner that allows the work to grow organically. The resulting sculpture is a hybrid object/organism whose final form references both foreign and familiar bodily elements to create tension between the familiar and the unknown and explore notions of the abject. It is this tension between form and formlessness, and allure and repulsion that is central to my practice. Recent work uses a sewing technique influenced by cut-work embroidery in which puckered holes are sewn into fabric. This use of negative space and bone/flesh coloured fabric such as calico makes reference to varying bone-like forms such as coral as well as the inside structure of bone itself. Exploring the idea of bone as something soft, malleable and organic as well as strong and protective. This reversal of hard and soft textures creates tension within the familiar duality of flesh and bone, blurring the boundary between the two to navigate a space that exists in-between, oscillating between the physical and the metaphysical. These works led to an interest in the idea of bodily residue. The use of second hand clothes and sheets as materials that contain a literal and conceptual trace of the body and residue left behind by finished sculptures, reinventing the work in a context other than installation. Works are translated into wearable pieces that integrate and interact with the subject through photographic portraits; I have begun to experiment with printing sculptures and scraps of thread as collographs; am interested in experimenting with a process called lace draping in which fabric is dipped in porcelain slip and burns away when it is fired transforming it into a solid shape.
My practice investigates possibilities for sewn sculpture to explore and complicate the relationships between concepts of the decorative and the grotesque. My work is materially driven and usually involves an obsessive compulsive process of making hundreds of individually stuffed fabric forms and then sewing them together in an intuitive manner that allows the work to grow organically. The resulting sculpture is a hybrid object/organism whose final form references both foreign and familiar bodily elements to create tension between the familiar and the unknown and explore notions of the abject. It is this tension between form and formlessness, and allure and repulsion that is central to my practice. Recent work uses a sewing technique influenced by cut-work embroidery in which puckered holes are sewn into fabric. This use of negative space and bone/flesh coloured fabric such as calico makes reference to varying bone-like forms such as coral as well as the inside structure of bone itself. Exploring the idea of bone as something soft, malleable and organic as well as strong and protective. This reversal of hard and soft textures creates tension within the familiar duality of flesh and bone, blurring the boundary between the two to navigate a space that exists in-between, oscillating between the physical and the metaphysical. These works led to an interest in the idea of bodily residue. The use of second hand clothes and sheets as materials that contain a literal and conceptual trace of the body and residue left behind by finished sculptures, reinventing the work in a context other than installation. Works are translated into wearable pieces that integrate and interact with the subject through photographic portraits; I have begun to experiment with printing sculptures and scraps of thread as collographs; am interested in experimenting with a process called lace draping in which fabric is dipped in porcelain slip and burns away when it is fired transforming it into a solid shape.
State
Queensland
Queensland
Website
http://www.alicelang.com
http://www.alicelang.com
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