Angus Baldwin
Northern Beaches Secondary College Freshwater Senior Campus
TURNING A BLIND EYE
Sculpture
Oil, wood, aluminium
Deuteranopia: red-green colourblindness. My greens are red and blues are orange, according to the tests at least. I thought being colourblind was my weakness, but perhaps it’s playing a role in a society that will not open its eyes, not willing to see the destruction of our environment through the continued use of fossil fuels. I used train moulds, oil paint, rust patina and recycled bike wheels in my body of work to represent my memories, all tainted now. A warm house in winter: more carbon in our atmosphere. My favourite soft toy: filled with plastic that never breaks down.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the artist Robert Klippel.
Marker's Commentary
Turning a Blind Eye deals with a pressing contemporary challenge of environmental degradation seen through the metaphor of the artist’s own experience of colour blindness (Deuteranopia). The work is explored through a modernist lens but with contemporary calculation, meshing commentary on threats to our environment with narrative, painted vignettes. In creating this formidable sculptural series, the student has used industrial timber pattern mouldings of different forms and sizes, skilfully incorporating painted panels into each component and arranging them on different planes to explore three-dimensionality. The totemic configuration is assembled to create a cohesive abstract whole with representational focal points. The sculpture is both playful and imaginative, paying homage to Robert Klippel and assemblages that demonstrate his ability to evoke the natural world using man-made materials. The foundry patterns, used more than a century ago to cast metal machine parts, have been combined and assembled in tall and shorter towers. They communicate ideas relating to the power of our industrial heritage. They are balanced, sometimes horizontally, at times vertically or diagonally to demonstrate their aesthetic value, varied shapes, solidity of form and exploration of space. Smaller pattern pieces as well as a series of wheels, project at dramatic angles yet come together in harmony. There is refinement in the construction with attention given to the relationships of forms. The limited palette of rust and yellow ochre reflects the original colours of the mouldings, which have been assembled in controlled ways to support the strong presence of each form. The circular portrait of the student represented with his hand across his eyes, takes on a significant presence. Dots of different sizes, echo the Ishahara colour test, which was used to identify colour blindness. They are repeated as a motif on the painted panels, being both pattern and evoking cell structures. They represent our lack of action on environmental issues and hence our blindness to the damage caused by such inaction, as well as colour blindness. This large work is a fusion of mechanical and organic, being both abstract yet full of layered ideas.