Spike Dennis - "...ultimately they fail to excite me."

Spike Dennis - Untitled 1, 2 and 3 - Mixed Media

These works are early creations as part of a body of work that I have been developing. They are constructed from combinations of soft textiles with heavier materials such as plaster and clay.

Image 1 depicts a phallic looking object that never evolved any further. I ran out of plaster before I’d finished filling the fabric casing. By the time I’d come back to it the plaster had already set. This piece never led to further work.

Image 2 was retrieved from the bin after being cut of the top of a larger object. The panels of fabric from which it is constructed were cut too small and so it caused the two way stretch fabric to which it was attached to distort and pulled on the stitches that held in place. The ‘finished’ artwork has now been fitted with an appropriately sized replacement.

Image 3 was a test piece for a new body of work. In this instance the reasons by which I have judged the work to have failed are much more subjective. I felt that the two tone synthetic fur wasn’t effective as it is too ‘unreal’, and the faux snakeskin material did not have enough stretch in it to achieve the shape that I hoped to achieve. The lack of give in this material and the thin plastic coating that is used to create the snakeskin effect prevented me from achieving the bulbous form that I was endeavouring to create.

I consider all of these works to be failures because none of them satisfied the measures by which I judge my work a success. I find them all to be deficient with regard to their form and ultimately they fail to excite me.


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