Sculpturescapes

Sculpturescapes are mixed-media sculptural installations in a viewing chamber and seen through a monocular aperture that places the viewer at the centre of the experience. Gigi creates the illusion of scale, space and other worldliness by controlling light and colour. These imagined landscapes reference myth and recent history along themes of journey, division, and transformation – from Jason and the Argonauts to the Berlin Wall.

“… and the same objects appear straight when looked at out of the water, and crooked when in the water, and the concave becomes convex, owing to the illusion about colours to which sight is liable. Thus every sort of confusion is revealed within us, and this is that weakness of the human mind in which the art of conjuring and of deceiving by light and shadow and other ingenious devices imposes, having an effect upon us like magic.”

- Plato 'The Republic' Book X

The Jason Series - The Clashing Rocks

This series of Sculpturescapes is an interpretation of the epic myth of Jason and the Argonauts and their journey through the Symplegades – the Clashing Rocks – on their way to find the Golden Fleece in the land of Colchis. Gigi has created three-dimensional sculptures within a light chamber. Seen from Jason’s perspective onboard his ship The Argo, she has created a single telescopic viewing point. Gigi has used the illusory nature of the Sculpturescape to capture the sense and atmosphere of the journey. The essential elements of these artworks are the journey, the world beyond the horizon and the world below.

The ship ‘Argo’ was built with the help of the Goddess of crafts, Athena and Jason filled the ship with the leading heroes of his time including Heracles. He is on the high seas with only his Argonauts to guide him. They had to pass through The Clashing Rocks which until then had never been achieved. The rocks would crush anything or anyone in their path. An old man called Phineus gave Jason the advice to set loose a white dove to fly between the rocks and then if the dove succeeded, they should row with all their might and sail through.

The lines are the ineluctable lines of force which simultaneously drive and lead Jason on his journey towards the horizon line and into the unknown. No-one can ever reach their horizon even though it hangs there like a beacon.

The World Beyond, 2011, C-Type Photograph, 30 x 40cm

Guardians of The Bosphorus, 2011, C-Type Photograph, 30 x 40cm

Where The Sea and The Sky Meet, 2011, C-Type Photograph, 30 x 40cm

The Deep Series

These Sculpturescapes of The Deep are inspired by the same legend as The Clashing Rock series – that of Jason and the Argonauts’ mythical journey across the sea to the land of Colchis. This time the focus is on the mysterious and unfathomable world below the deep sea. Waveforms reflect the nocturnal light illuminating the crest of waves and the strange apertures and creatures that inhabit the deep.

Lines In Space, 2014, C-Type Photograph, 30 × 40cm

The Deep Below I, 2011, C-Type Photograph, 30 × 40cm

The Deep Below II, 2013, C-Type Photograph, 30 × 40cm

Waveform III, 2013, C-Type Photograph, 30 × 40cm

The Jason Series - The Knight’s Templar

These sculptures take their inspiration from a visit to an abandoned Romanesque church in Apulia in 1970s. Gigi was shown a long-forgotten initiation chamber of the Knights Templar deep below the crypt. It had been created by people who had an understanding of the sensory effect that light would have had on the initiates. They left from a room designed as a pure circle, with a piercing natural light giving only the hint of the shape of the room. They then had to navigate through a narrow coal-black passage, set with stumbling blocks and recesses in which the knights could conceal themselves and set upon the initiates to prevent them from reaching their goal; a room built as a pure square and again illuminated by a simple shaft of natural light.

This journey has parallels with that of Jason and the Argonauts, as described in The Clashing Rocks series.

Guide Me, 2011, C-Type Photograph, 59 x 38cm

Passage, 2015, C-Type Photograph, 40 × 30cm

Force, 2011, C-Type Photograph, 59 x 38cm

The Beginnings

In this Sculpturescape, we are witnesses to a scene of an other-worldly place, where a lady quietly marvels at this luminescence. It appears momentarily cradled coming from a seemingly endless realm beyond.

Beginnings, 2020, C-Type Photograph, 30 × 40cm

The Jason Series - Passage

This series of Sculpturescapes is about passage. We chance upon a person deep in prayer and contemplation in a chamber, perhaps from another entrance, window or keyhole. Behind is a doorway, a liminal space. Being in the unknown fills the atmosphere with heightened expectation and drama – when Jason took his rite of passage to find the Golden Fleece, and the Knights Templars took part in their rites of initiation, the effect of place on their senses was important. Passages contain elements of mystery, discovery, unpredictability, sometimes darkness into light – light into darkness.

Passage III, 2016, C-Type Photograph, 40 × 30cm

Passage I, 2016, C-Type Photograph, 40 × 30cm

Passage II, 2016, C-Type Photograph, 40 × 30cm

The Berlin Wall

I was listening to a Podcast about a German writer called Christa Wolff. Neil McGregor, then head of the British Museum, was talking about the impact the Wall had on families and friends when they became divided by it.

Christa Wolff wrote about this period in her novel ‘Der Geteilte Himmel’. ‘Himmel’ is the word for both ‘sky’ and ‘heaven’.

On watching the wall being built, the main character, Manfred, says to his wife Rita “at least they can’t divide the sky”.

I was struck by the simplicity of this idea as a sculptor. The phrase implies an unbounded freedom. I wanted to create a sense of longing in a new series of Sculpturescapes in response to this. It had to express the wonder of the firmament above us, from the vantage point of a drain, a cell, a tunnel or a wall.