The Tower

Reconstruction of a Catastrophe

Miniatures in Contemporary Art

Jake and Dinos Chapman
Fucking Hell, 2008

Thomas Doyle, A corrective, 2010

Thomas Doyle
Dissolution of entities, 2006

Thomas Doyle
Escalation, 2008

Daniel Dorall, Asylum, 2005

Lori Nix, Floater, 2001

Alone In A Crowd Table, Rolf Sachs, 2010

Why miniatures? Below is a brief explanation of the physical, emotional and conceptual content of the ‘miniature (art) object’ and the evocative nature of objects in general, to illustrate the significance of creating miniature work.
Extensive reading on miniature theory has underpinned my artist practice for the past 4 years. In On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Susan Stewart articulates the miniature’s ability to “skew time and space relations of the everyday lifeworld” and finds its use value transformed into “the infinite time of reverie.” (Stewart, 1993, p.65) It has the capacity to create an “other” time, one which prohibits change and the instability of lived reality. Thus, adopting the miniature scale provides an effective platform to communicate moral ideas of life/death within a diminutive, ordered world away from external chaos.

“Values become engulfed in miniature, and miniature causes men to dream.” (Bachelard, 1958)

In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard articulates his perception of (miniature) scale by expressing: “Too often the world designated by philosophy is merely a non-I, its vastness an accumulation of negativities… In fact, I feel more at home in miniature worlds, which, for me, are dominated worlds. And when I live them I feel waves that generate world-consciousness emanating from my dreaming self. For me, the vastness of the world has become merely the jamming of these waves.” (Bachelard, 1994, p.161) Hence, to experience the miniature offers detachment from the external world; a place where we can embrace the imagination...“But we haven’t time, in this world of ours, to love things and see them at close range, in the plentitude of their smallness.” (Bachelard, 1994, p.163) And so, on reading this leading philosopher’s beliefs, I have confidence in the miniature scale to stage the exploration of profound human concepts, not only because of its innate capacity to create a palatable “other” world, but in its strength to interject the chaotic, dominated reality we live in by presenting itself within the art domain.

Relating to the essays in Evocative Objects: Things we Think With (edited by Sherry Turkle) I learned about the potency of “objects as emotional and intellectual companions that anchor memory, sustain relationships, and provoke new ideas.” (Turkle, 2007) I am particularly interested in the evocative nature of everyday objects and the manner in which we relate with them, to the point where rational thoughts and feelings are inseparable. Turkle recognises how familiar it is to consider objects as “useful or aesthetic, as necessities or vain indulgences”. She further identifies the lesser familiar ground in which “we consider objects as companions to our emotional lives or as provocations to thought.”(Turkle, 2007) With this acknowledgment, I strive to create artwork that places the viewer within this unfamiliar territory; to promote a more intimate connection with the objects that nourish lived experience.

The Factory, Driessens & Verstappen, 1995

Little Disasters

Julia Murakami, Anatomy of a Fairytale,2008

Dorothy

Thomas Doyle, Refuge, 2010

Hotel Modern, The Great War, 2001