Christine Borland

research / process

Twelve months were spent on the research for the work; primarily in Glasgow Museums (GM) stores exploring an inventory of 2,000 WWI objects in dialogue with GM staff. Museums throughout Germany, battle-fields in Flanders and sites on the Western Front were also visited, to engage with reciprocal collections of WWI-related material culture. Events were devised throughout the year, to open up diverse narratives surrounding WWI objects, including artist-led tours of GM stores, the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre (GMRC) symposium Doubtful Occasion and PhotoSculpture (see below).

Borland identified an artifact – a ceramic invalid feeder cup — from GM Open Museums handling kit, which had a dual historical function in both invalid care and in the force-feeding of imprisoned, hunger-striking Suffragettes. She engaged with relevant staff and Museum Ethics committees to negotiate the exchange of this artifact with a similar one from her own collection. The GM feeder cup was taken to Flanders and involved in a controlled explosion, carried out by the Belgian Bomb Disposal Squad to be ‘made safe’; a term used for the explosion of WWI armaments regularly unearthed in Flanders.

PHOTOSCULPTURE

Experiments with archive photographs, copying and collage led to an increasing fascination with the performative potential of the small ceramic teacup-like object with spout: an invalid feeder cup. In tandem, Borland came across the photo-sculpture studio of François Willème that operated in Sedan, France during the mid-nineteenth century. An extraordinary rotunda housed 24 concealed cameras to simultaneously capture a subject posed at its centre, a process which combined experimental photographic and sculptural methods to reproduce three-dimensional portraits. 

In an event at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum on 23 April 2018, Glasgow Museums staff, participants from the Doubtful Occasion symposium (see below), artists and friends were invited to be the 24 camera operators simultaneously pressing their shutters.

Working with models, two poses were selected to be reproduced using the photo-sculpture method. One representing ‘invalid care’, based on a German World War I photograph of nurses feeding a wounded soldier with an invalid feeder cup, and one based on a description of a cup being used in the force-feeding of suffragettes. By posing the groups far beyond the central point of the circular structure, it was clear that images gathered from the event would not produce an accurate ‘replica’ of either of the poses, rather a chance distortion of reality.

The faces of the models playing the male and female subjects were covered by masks of the faces from a sculpture sited on Kelvin Way Bridge, facing the entrance to Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Peace and War by Paul Raphael Montford are one of four pairs of sculptures adorning the bridge. The faces of the sculptures were replicated by laser-scanning the originals and 3-D printing them in ABS plastic in order to make the masks. The form of the final sculptural work was developed from the data gathered during the PhotoSculpture event.