Diaspora

My sculptures have conquered already three continents, even without me sending them per mail off-shore. The furthest I posted so far is Queensland, some have found a home in Germany, one in Greece, one in India and soon one in Switzerland. Most of them will be scattered around the greater Melbourne area, quite some of those in good use as demonstration objects.

Fossilised bio-material, millions of year old, provided the oil needed to produce the tension elements and transport the materials into my home. The bamboo grew most likely in China, processed, packaged and sent to Australia. At least I started lately to use my unicycle for shopping trips when possible to keep the energy-consumption of my home-made products low. Only one essential production-step involves electricity, the rest consists of purely manual effort.

Mass-production distracts from the idea of tracing the origins of a product. In a consumer-society, the life cycle of products remains unknown, sometimes even for good reasons. Hand-made products existed throughout history whenever the social organisation enabled 'economy'. In our globalised world, we got used to have a similar range of products, at least Maccas and Coca-Cola reached nearly everywhere.

A mass-producer has usually a well-organised distribution infrastructure in place, while I just have a point of sale twice a month, in an obscure location in funky Fitzroy. I love the variety of products in the Rose Street Artist's Market, it's a place that invites to do much more than just shopping. It brings back fair trade (not the trademarked one) in the sense of no involvement of middle men.

I'm still torn whether to call the objects undergoing a commercial transaction 'product' or '(art) work'. I build some models a conscious artistic attitude, others belong more to the 'fun in making and playing with' category. My main intention in producing tensegrity structure lies in spreading the tensegrity meme.

The information about tensegrity travels faster via the internet, yet I consider materialised structures more appealing. Models help understanding in an embodied way, instead of simply processing ideas and pictures. My sculptures fill space with lightness and delicate balance, yielding to force before returning into shape. Three continents in less than a year makes me happy and determined to continue my exploration into the lightness of movement and balance.