Nerine Martini

The Social Scaffold Project has involved a process of community engagement, working cross culturally to encourage collective creativity and a sharing of ideas and storytelling. The method of participatory art, where the artist works with people who do not identify as artists, aims to encourage collective creativity, to bring migrant stories to a wider audience and to foster a sense of belonging.

During a series of workshops, held at Blacktown Arts Centre, keys were employed as talking points. Keys are objects that are invested with meaning and memories, for this project they were deployed as catalysts to begin conversations about people’s lives: past and present, their memories and dreams. The participants were invited to share their stories relating to keys.

In the final workshops we worked together to cast the keys, creating plaster molds. From these molds I have worked in the studio to create ceramic keys using porcelain clay. This material shift has transformed the key, it no longer has a functional use, it has become a symbolic object employed as a motif within the artwork. The multiple ceramic keys are suspended within a scaffolding structure, which is constructed from split bamboo tied with string. The scale of the installation has a relationship to the scale of the human body. The towers of scaffolding are weighted with small sandbags to prevent them from precariously toppling over.

Scaffold Sculptures
On a personal level these bamboo sculptures can be read as metaphors: building as a form of recovery. The small scale means that the sculptures read like architectural models, albeit abstracted. Some have recognizable forms and elements; others became abstract and dysfunctional, with ladders leading nowhere. Scaffolding obviously does not require an architectural model; its function is what is important. The scaffold is only a temporary structure, when it is no longer required it’s taken away leaving only a memory of its use. Scaffolding seen around the city reminds us of the state of flux, the changing cityscape and the dislocation that this change can induce.