Idea for a Work

It has occurred to me that all of my work so far in this project has been, in a sense, self portraiture. Robert Morris' Self Portraits (1963) and his Imprints and Body Casts (1963-64) has clarified this for me and influenced me to move on from the drawing and focus on sculpture. I can use my body to manipulate clay as Morris has done in his imprints and body casts. Of course I cannot make any cast at this time as the workshops are closed.


Idea for a Morris/Gormley-like piece for the Tate Modern.
Invite the public to produce a small sculpture for me involving their body e.g gripping and squeezing a small volume of clay with their foot. Invitation letters to take part in this project will be given out to a large population of Britain. Whoever wants to take part will send back a notice of clarification either by post or internet. I would like to think a very large population of the country would like to be involved as their very own sculpture will be involved in this piece and it will be placed in the well known turbine hall of the Tate Modern. A small volume of clay (wrapped up and kept moist) will then be sent to each applicants house. They will then follow my simple instructions and then send the sculpture back which will be paid for by me (government grant). My hopes would be that enough sculptures would be produced to fill the turbine hall of the Tate Modern. If this was to succeed I feel it would be a beautiful piece to witness and be apart of. Like Gormley's, the sheer presense of material will create an atmospheric space. It relates to self portraiture and the concepts of the ego I have been looking at throughout the last few weeks. It would be a pretty special sight to witness thousands of these individual but similar sculptures filling a gigantic space.