Spare Parts (Plaster Objects)

2019

Series of 11 plaster assemblages

While studying at the Lucerne School of Art and Design, I took a module on plaster and began to collect what others threw away: offcuts from the design students’ workshop, silicone moulds a restorer used to repair stucco ceilings, two moulds from an archaeological dig (a stove tile with a knight, an elephant) and plaster casts of teeth from a dentist.

In 2019, a year after my degree, I assembled these fragments into small figures in my first studio. I glued them with the restorer’s adhesive, which is itself a kind of plaster. The stucco ornament is historicist, from the 19th century, when styles were taken from the ornament box and freely combined. I worked in much the same way.

All of these parts were once made to stand in for something: a missing piece of ceiling, a lost tooth. Put together, they became creatures, and each one got a name.

Exhibition
2020 · Of Pears and Apples, b74, Lucerne