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Still Life No.1

‘Still Life No.1’ is an installation by the ‘Brass Art’ collective (Chara Lewis, Kristin Mojsiewicz and Anneke Pettican), and was commissioned by The Whitworth Art Gallery as part of the exhibition ‘Dark Matters: Shadow Technology Art’, staged in 2011.

The process that led to ‘Still Life No.1’ incorporates archival research into the natural and mineralogical collections of the University of Manchester Museum and experimental research into the creative potential of digital 3D scanning and printing. Building on the AHRC funded project ‘Digitised Doubles’, it is the result of a creative experiment into the ways in which museum artefacts can be brought to life using shadow, with its qualities of absence, presence, transience, death and essence as a visual tool and philosophical entity. The work comprises of three large drawings, one installation of nine rapid-prototype sculptural figures and rocks (from mineralogy collection), one large antler rapid-prototype (from the natural history collection).

3D prints of various artefacts from the UoM Museum were arranged into imaginative landscapes, inhabited by miniaturised doppelgangers of the artists, also produced through digital scanning and printing. These tableaux are then brought to life through the use of projected shadow, cast onto the walls of the gallery itself.

Inclusion in ‘Dark Matters’ positions ‘Still Life No. 1’ within a field of international artists who use both technology and shadow. Investigation of new scanning procedures, including hand held laser, tomography and CT, has been important in developing this research and secured a grant for innovative application of technologies from the Association of Art Historians as well as R+D funding from Arts Council England. The pioneering nature of the project attracted corporate sponsorship from Ogle Models Ltd and leading technologists Huntsman, and formed the central focus of a conference paper selected for ‘SIGGRAPH’ 2012.