Let me reintroduce you to ‘Frankenstein’s Orifice Box’, one of my sculptures from 2011. I’ve decided to re-photograph (now that I’ve got slightly better studio lights and a proper backdrop) a lot of my artwork. So, apologies in advance, but prepare yourself for a torrent of blasts from the past over the coming weeks.
'Frankenstein's Orifice Box', 2011, artist Wayne Chisnall
Owing its inspiration, in part, to an earlier one of my sculptures, the wall-mounted, low relief sculpture, 'Orifice' (with its carved wooden aperture), 'Frankenstein's Orifice Box' also incorporates another motif that has run through much of my work - that of the nail box (inspired, in part, by the dreamlike animations of the Bothers Quay, where rusty nails and screws come to life, and in part, by the Minkisi artefacts/totemic carvings from the Congo region). If you peer in through the sculpture's orifice you will see an internal, nail-encrusted wooden box on stilts.
'Frankenstein's Orifice Box', 2011, artist Wayne Chisnall
well as the obvious sexual interpretation of the orifice element, my main interest in the device lies in it being the portal between the internal and the external. This can be interpreted in both psychological and physical terms.
'Frankenstein's Orifice Box' (detail), 2011, artist Wayne Chisnall
The actual inspiration for 'Orifice' came to me when I saw a van drive past me with a puncture hole in its side, and I noticed how the metal around the puncture had taken on a strangely organic appearance, not too dissimilar to the swollen and raised skin around a small cut that I had on the back of my hand at the time. It's strange to think of when and from where inspiration for artwork can come. Maybe if I hadn't spotted that van at that particular moment in time, a whole body of work wouldn't now exist.
'Frankenstein's Orifice Box', 2011, artist Wayne Chisnall
