The Making of Palanquin

These early works were like putting a toe in the water before jumping, and I wanted to make life-size works, so developed the idea of modelling a form around my own body. I became aware of Anthony Gormley’s early work around this time and took encouragement from his intentions but his material process was quite different, his were casts of his body, mine were modelled from within. In a crouched position I built up a clay wall around my feet with a roughly 5cm gap between body and wall and continued all around the body and over my head. This took several days and of course in the breaks from modelling saw from the outside how it was forming. It looked remarkably similar to the small figures made earlier. The difference was that I became more conscious of the hollow body inside.