My work as an artist confronts inclusive characteristics from collections of vast materials. I am interested in the complexities of the makings of souvenirs and how stuff becomes evidence for personal provenance.

Over the past ten years I have been in search for the substance my father used to use to mend and repair everything in the homestead. I remember intimate objects (toys) I would treasure as a child that became fixed after broken but also given the trace of touch through visible fingerprints. In 2016 whilst undergoing a fulltime MA I found it! This was Milliput.

Working with the different varieties of Milliput opened new questions to how I work, this helped to shatter points of comfort and safety in my practice and progressed to redeveloping rooted theory that became my final exhibited body of work.

The physicality of Milliput was one I was enchanted with as a maker. It became more and more of a key ingredient in pieces and celebrated through important dominants in my work. The points of change within the setting spectrum was a focus of development by means of experimental investigation within each transition to achieve poetic osmosis that sometimes becomes ignored.

Scale changed dramatically by working with Milliput and how I would conceive ideas to push my work to states of confusion in the installation process. Each work became distant conversations that communicated the nuances that act as ghosts in the tangible realm. The values bound to nostalgia became shorthand metaphors that promote unknown exit points within my making process and released freedom of expression.

I class Milliput as a material I will revisit to continue the progression of my artistic ideas for the future. I have many banked plans to enlist its vast properties for up and coming new major pieces.

http://www.markmcleish.blogspot.com 

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