Reflection / Aluminium

Aluminium is eternally and widly recyclable and throughout I have used it in my object making, from takeaway packets, to recycled armature wires and heavy gauge ‘black wrap foil’ discarded by the metre on photoshoots. I like that it is malleable and I was really excited when I found it could be mirror polished. It is playful but also useful. It manipulates light and bounces my reflection and nature back at me. I see myself. I see outside. it calms me. It offers a many functions.

As part of my sensory workshops I wanted to create objects that reflected light to soothe the sense of seeing, and thought polished aluminium would be perfect. Ideally I wanted to recycle my own cans and cast and polish objects, but in leiu of access to the the foundry I have experimented with sheet aluminium to make these puzzle like forms that bounce light and reflections.

I visited my dad who ( at a distance) helped me cut the shapes and imparted wisdom on working with sheet metal. I really enjoyed playing with the pieces and was even quite sad to have to hammer them flat because such interesting forms were created. I shared some pictures to instagram.

I really like the forms and how they work with modularity and its definitely something I would take forward into my final refined designs…. What I liked the most was the soothing reflections that were captured in the pieces shown in the photo above and this video

I also had a go this term at compacting aluminium using a hammer and attempting to mirror polish it. Inspired by a very random trend on youtube. The results can be seen below. It was beginning to work and I managed to get part of it very shiny, but to get the smoothness needed for mirroring was incredibly hard. I was drawn the the fact that it uses alot less energy than using the foundry to get organic shapes out of aluminium, but the process was unpredictable and definitely wasn’t soothing for me. I really liked the visual effect of the compacted aluminium even though it didn’t fill the mirror brief as I’d hoped . I like the way the folds are evident and give a story of the materials past life. I would like to integrate this method in the future. I particularly like the look of the stone shaped piece and keep imagining it really big. But I don’t think I’ll be compacting and buffing mirrored surfaces this way.