Monday 22 June 2009

Diane Shufflebottom

Shufflebottom graduated with a degree in Fine Art Sculpture in the year 2000. She has since worked for 5 years as a prop maker at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre as well as having made props for Bud Weiser adverts, sculpted microphone stands for ‘The Darkness’ and ‘Motor Head’ tours, exhibited mixed media installations, worked as art director on several film shorts and is currently working as a 3D Design Technician at MMU.
Within her own art work she trys to make serious subject matters more accessible to people by the playful way in which she injects humour into the pieces.

Inspired by the Stephen Fry documentary ‘The secret life of a manic depressive’, I wanted to put his descriptions of the taboo illness in to a scene that may help people try to understand what it is like for the sufferers.
The setting was that of the Mad Hatters tea party, with a place setting at either end of the table for the manic side and the other for the depressed.
Each end had their own specially modified objects to represent their polar opposite states of mind. Moet tea pots appeared to be happily bubbling on ice at one end, whilst at the other, fragile alcohol bottle teapots had down turned chipped and dribbling spouts, and were literally coming apart at the seems.
The apposing ends appeared at war with one another, complete carnage, chaos and destruction fights against meticulous, obsessive compulsive, precision and order. Eventually the depressed end turning on its self, with tea pots which look some what tank like and appear to be shooting at their own troops.
This time I have only used a few components from the original installation, seeing if it is still capable of conveying any of the feelings it did in its original setting.

shuffy19@hotmail.com

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