Artist Research

Norton Flavel -  Bulk Carrier

In this time lapse video of the event Sculpture by the Sea there is a work by Norton Flavel titled "Bulk Carrier" - this work is an enormous wine cask so I have included this into my research as it reflects some of my own thoughts.

I discovered this work whilst flicking through the reviews in the latest issue of ArtLink. Laetitia Wilson reviews Sculpture By The Sea, her comments on the Bulk Carrier work by Norton Flavel suggest that she isn't overly impressed by the "all-too-familiar" strategy to make everyday objects enormous - for her it lacks any thought provoking sensibilities.

I watched an interview of Norton Flavel discussing this work, I must agree that I found his points about his work quite uninteresting. He says "it's about big things and it references ships, and you know all the stuff we carry around, baggage and" ..it sounds like it was a surprise interview as his thought do not appear collected to respond to what his work is actually about? It is a playful piece of work, but for me this idea of increasing that size of a well known object and thus taking it out of context has been done - and this work doesn't offer anything new to this conversation. I find that I really want it to be interactive, beyond the point that onlookers can photograph it - it looks as if it would be so fun to jump on.