The Sound of Silence

This sculpture has haunted me, and not just for its content.
I have made this sculpture twice now, for the New York based Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar. Once at Fabrica in Brighton, and once at the South London Gallery. Both times it has been slightly different, the version that you see here is the smaller of the two and it was made using pre-cut sheets of anodised aluminium. The earlier Fabrica version was made using zinc plated steel sheet.

Why was it so problematic? The sculpture was never designed, instead the only instructions that the artist gives to any gallery hoping to stage the work is a cartoon like line drawing of its sides. The result of this lack of specification is that each gallery has to invent a structure to support the precise outer shell, the people that undertake that task are usually the same ones who build temporary walls and hang pictures, so of course they go about the task as though it were a small room. Starting with a wooden studwork frame that easily accomodates the inevitable undulations in the gallery floor, all seems well until the ceiling structure is attempted. It is then that the spans involved make the need for rigidity painfully apparent - mistakenly solved by adding more wood. When the metal cladding is added the folly of using a wooden frame that is straining under its own self-weight becomes clear, they no longer fit square. The work takes on a new dimension, one of cladding an essentially undulating wooden frame in a manner that resembles building a boat half of wood half of metal.

A lighter touch is required - next time I will make sure that I am involved from the start - to ensure that the sheet metal is framed, allowed to be as square and dimensionaly stable as it does best. then construct the outer walls by connecting the individual rectilinear frames to make the walls true and uniform. The ceiling can then be stretched with lightweight, blackout cloth and strutted where neccesary (could use polystyrene sheet).

Oh yes I haven't mentioned the hundred flourescent light fittings yet have I.