Taya Mikah
Bachelor of Fine Arts (Sculpture)
Through gardening, I have become more conscious of how plants hold themselves. I began to see everything dropping downwards but growing upwards; a sort of directional play facilitated by the tension between the light of the sun and the gravity of the earth. To explore this relationship, I started making plant stems from my studio curtains. I gathered the fabric through spiralled bin-rescued copper wires to create the spine-like plant structures. Where wire meets fabric a floppy, yet secure, tension is created and the stems hold themselves in whatever space they are placed in—hang them, put them on a chair, lace them or knot them. Playing with these stems helped me find what I was always looking for: a structure that can drop but also hold its own centre, as gravity holds us all.
