Ella Dangen

I use timber and mirrors in my works to express the fluidity and infinite depth of the reflections that are produced by creating a linear effect for the timber and mosaic for the mirrors to show the distortion between viewing the sculpture in front of you and viewing it through the mosaic mirrors. I am exploring how your mind and brain work when the viewer is put into a situation where reality and reflections change. The timber is thin enough to bend and construct a linear sphere. The fluidness of the timber veneer fluctuated due to some thinned strips being finer than others. Hill and Jones are New Zealand artists who revolve their work around associations with natural bodies of water and how the reflections mimic cyclical natural systems and the manufacture of manmade systems. These artists have inspired me throughout my work as they use similar ideas to what I am exploring in my work. Hill and Jones use reflections and circular forms to produce work. The way they make half circular forms and use the water as the other half to make a whole sculpture gave me inspiration for my work. I originally was going to make half a wooden circular sculpture and let the mosaics determine the remainder of the other half, but I realised when going through this process that I preferred the sculpture whole. When viewing the sculpture walking into the space, I want it to appear to be “in one piece” and the more you walk around the exhibition, the more distorted the sculpture becomes due to the mirrors making your perspective change on the sculpture.  There is a cross-pollination between the mediums, expanding the sense of pictorial space to cause an illusion. I use mirrors and reflections to expand our perspectives and, when walking into the space of the exhibition to feel like you are immersed in an infinite space. Over time, I have found myself drawn to timber and its flexibility and how I can transform my sculpture into a curvilinear form. This shattered perception work, attempts to enhance the visual perspective and to have a new insight into the way we view art. I want the viewer to be overwhelmed by the fracturing of line and pattern and to be morphed into the exhibition itself. Not only is the suspended sculpture one of the central objects in the installation, the people walking through it also become part of the sculpture itself.