House
Over the summer I was set a project for my Art Foundation course to build a house that represents my personality and interests. I recently began reading a book called ‘End Game – Tipping Point For Planet Earth?’ by Anthony D. Barnosky and Elizabeth A. Hadly which talks about the growing threats to humanity as the planet edges towards a resource war for remaining space, food, oil and water. It points out the fact that these are not issues of a dystopian future but are happening now. I am finding the book massively interesting as it touches upon points I am myself passionate about. In recent years I have found myself becoming more an more materialistic, adding towards earths tipping point and am desperately trying to get away from this, but as most humans, particularly in the western world it would be difficult to survive in the society with have now without relying of earths global resources. I am passionate about a lot of modern day issues like the environment, politics, human rights etc and am learning more an more everyday about these issues.
I recently just came back from New Zealand and in that time, witnessing protests of deep sea oil drilling on the coast. The campaign was 
named ‘Oil Free Otago’. It is easy to ignore this issue as it can often seem distant but it angers me how many people are unwilling to make important changes to the things such as the drilling of oil, oil that we are very quickly running out of. Despite having liable alternatives such as solar energy, wind power and other more eco friendly methods of harnessing energy, not to mention the countless wars and other issues around the oil trade.
My interest in this subject was something I wanted to incorporate within my house. I had the thought that I was inspired by a book so why not create the house out of a book. I have seen art carved out of books before and I think it is really skilful and beautiful, for example the work of Guy Laramee. One of his well known pieces was done by carving an entire 24 volume set of Encyclopaedia Brittanica into a mountainous landscape. The detail is incredible and I love the concept.
I knew I would not be able to pull off this much detail but I wanted to give the technique a go. I want to represent the non reversible extraction of earths materials transforming into a man made product so I decided to carve the house out of the book. My idea was for a basic shaped house effectively dug out of the book, leaving a hole on one side and the house of the other. The hole would represent the extraction of the materials in a way thats irreversible. Once the pages are cut there is not going back to the way it was before. However in terms of the house, it is not necessarily permanent and can be taken down, removed and destroyed like a lot of our things, but the materials and energy used can not go back to their prior state which is partly the reason why we our running out of resources.
I didn’t think that the actual book I used had to be significant so I used an old book that no one was planning on reading. I did an initial practice using an Argos catalog and it seemed to work so I proceeded with the book.
I’m really pleased with the way it has come out and love the look of it. Each page of the book represents the layers of the earth being destroyed permanently. I also think it has captured my interests of environmental issues and the world, something which I am extremely interested in. I also am constantly trying to learn more about everything and I think the use of a book reflects this well.
rachelauren 