Duchamp, Double Sided Tape And Fine Art

The ubiquitous presence of double sided tape permeates the memory banks of my childhood; Blue Peter infiltrated my cerebellum to the degree where my dreams were filled with kitchen roll tubes, cereal boxes and sticky backed plastic in a lucid like panic to make a Mother's Day present from kitchen junk. Double sided tape has been the staple for arts and crafts for many years, and along with all the other Blue Peter favourites it has kept the kids amused for years. As a budding young sculptor of aforementioned kitchen junk, it is interesting how I blossomed into the creative person I am. The availability of industrial strength tape for glaziers, plumbers and engineers has allowed creative flair to blossom in fine art circles.

Now specialising in industrial themed art, I still use doubled sided tape, but of the more hardcore type than was given to primary school children back in the seventies. The applications for specialised tape are limitless. If you can recall the Polyfilla adverts, probably from the same era, the strength of industrial adhesives are enough to keep a poor bloke in a boiler suit stuck to the underside of a plank while sharks swim beneath him. With this kind of advancement in adhesive properties, double sided tape can stick anything.

Good job the industrial strength stuff instils such confidence in those that use it; from my many failed objets d'art as a child I would be hard pressed to believe that double sided tape could achieve such adhesive wonders. Having said that, as a grown-up I have had the fortune (or should that be mis-fortune) to witness a person or two duct-taped to a lamp post in the name of pre wedding joviality. That stuff is strong I can assure you!

There are many different types of adhesive qualities available in rolls of double sided tape. Some adhesives are suited to glass, others to metal and yet another type for bonding fabrics. Some tape is self welding and can be used to mend leaking pipes. Now that is genius. As an artist being able to source such a diverse range of products to work with is essential. The way I work I like to make a mock-up of the sculpture I intend to make and under the creative inspiration that can strike at any moment, that mock-up can be made out of anything to hand in the studio.

Wooden doweling, scaffolding poles, newspaper, rubber and foam combine to form an initial structure that will later be layered with plaster. To make the prototype as it were, more than a hammer and nails are needed. Industrial tapes, from double sided glazing tape to insulating tape are convenient tools for the frenetic artist. It allows an idea to be formed quickly from any material to hand. Maybe the Blue Peter ethos has pervaded the working practices of many artists, who knows if the works of the likes of some of the great sculptors such as Claes Oldenburg have come about from such experimentation.

Many aspects of fine art utilise the products manufactured for industrial use, it is no longer a world where art works are comprised of canvass and oil paint. A multitude of materials that artists use come from industries such as medicine, engineering and construction and the artist needs to hone their skills in these fields to produce saleable works. By accessing the products available to industry, artists around the world have changed the face of fine art forever. Marcel Duchamp would be proud of our Blue Peter inspired contemporary art works, and I sometimes wonder what he would have made had he had a roll of double sided tape to hand.

Seed Newsvine

Bookmark this article in your preferred program

Comments

Add Comment

Popular Articles in this cathegory

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.