Tin Project: Clutter

Initially, my theme was an idea derived from my summer project – Clutter. I observed the cluttered environments around me, creating visual studies of these spaces and collating the similarities that linked them. This then lead me onto researching the causes and affects of clutter, specifically, the mental aspects and how clutter affects the brain. Mental illnesses were predominantly the cause and reasoning for a ‘cluttered environment” – anxiety, anger, stress and depression being the key disorders. I then began to explore how these disorders physically altered and changed the brain, both aesthetically and in terms of function. And so, I knew I wanted to use the idea of protection within my piece, to create an adornment that acted as a form of protection for the brain/the body as a whole. This idea development then caused me to research different forms of protection, in this case, in the form of body armour. The body amour that resonated with me the most was traditional roman battle amour (Lorica Segmentata). It spoke to me the most due to its bodily aesthetic and emulation of the human torso (mainly representative of the male torso) – the contours of the masculine physique in polished iron cascading around the body. Another aspect of this specific roman battle amour that caught my attention were the leather straps that fasten the piece together. The placement of the leather varied depending on the design – some possessed straps that span across the whole of the chest, some having a leather string that acted as a corset-like fastening at the front of the amour, covering the abdominal area, some simply had leather straps placed at the shoulders and obliques. Since this was the tin or wood project, I opted for tin. The tin I used was actually tin-plated steel. During my sampling process, through trial and error, I tried to use the tin to emulate the brain somehow and developed a design process that allowed me to achieve the desired brain-like effect. A step-by-step process of drawing onto the tin, cutting the form out, annealing, forging using a small-medium sized planishing hammer and using the planishing press to flatten the piece once forged – this forced the metal to collapse in on itself, and thus creating my desired brain-like, rippled, undulating, cluttered forms. My final design consists of various sized brain-like, tin amour pieces that are bound together by 5mm thick leather string, adorning the entirety of the torso. The piece is ironic, in a way, as it represents an attempt to protect the body from the human condition, stemming from the brain – but what use is physical amour when the harm is caused innately?