‘Two Bowls’ derives from Juliette Bigley’s interest in using vessels as a canvas through which to explore everyday experiences of living, especially the ways in which we locate our emotional and physical place in the world.
In this piece Juliette Bigley uses the archetypal form of the bowl – a form with associations of comfort, familiarity and ritual – to explore the thresholds or demarcations that lie between the inside and the outside. She juxtaposes a hollow form with a shape that appears solid, repositioning the orientations of in/out in a familiar object.
Juliette worked in a very hands-on way, experimenting and improvising directly with different materials, before making a rigorous formal analysis of what emerged from these experiments. She sketched only to solve specific problems.
The piece began as an exploration of form through the casting of plaster into moulds, quickly formed from styrene sheet. From this, certain hypotheses about lines and demarcations arose that she explored through writing, photography and mark making, using these conclusions to inform more making in further materials. Speculative work in metal – interpreting the forms she had created in other materials – generated further shapes that were refined, sometimes in metal and sometimes in other materials. This process resolved aspects of design, including angles, scale, technical issues and the internal relationship of lines within the pieces.
‘Two Bowls’ was hand constructed from sheet metal and soldered. The matt finish was applied by hand, built up with layer upon layer of marks using a variety of abrasives.
‘Two Bowls’ Sculpture – Sterling silver, Hallmarked London 2015
Website: www.juliettebigley.com
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