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what are you looking at?
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SPILT MiLK
by Daniel Eaton.
Artist Jenny Holzer famously once said, “spit all over someone with a mouthful of milk if you want to find out something about their personality fast.”
What is it about milk as a substance that speaks to mistakes? Is its ability to turn and to split, for something pure white to decay into grotesque liquid and its unavoidable dematerialisation? What’s done is done. Can there be comfort in knowing that?
Island Gelato lays still, watching commuters in their frantic hurry. It resides in the city’s ferry terminal, a threshold place of crossing. It is a fast space outside. It is no surprise then that the inside of the store aims to capture a sliver of calm. Gelato, works of art in themselves beacon from within the brightly lit cabinet.
Lime plastered walls, persistently change in its variety of earthly tonnes. A rogue fly or two are glimpsed from behind the till, a faint smell of spilled milk lingers.
Ice cream melts. Waffle cones crack. The idea of spilt milk propels my design documentation. The humorous and slightly awkward social exchange that follows such incidents is unveiled. Is there any use crying over Spilt milk? Coffee too is something particular to individuals, the line of dockets recording orders often misread and consequently misproduced. Milk is literally spilled in a frantic hurry disguised behind calm exteriors. Kids drop gelato from their cones. They cry. It becomes apparent that the gelato store, a social place of eating, connecting and exchanging revels in moments of mishap, imperfect jewels. This is something this book explores and celebrates. Things gone wrong, stains, rips, and simply annoying occurrences of our every day and their effecting awkward social occurrences in space. -
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How can a heightened dramatic encounter be expressed through the common motifs of theatre in design? Propelling a bar’s design, this question evokes the core essence of an intervention into the St James theatre.In the context of a theatre, one must accept darkness, intrigue, ambiguity and shadow as an underlying motif engulfing every stage. Storytelling becomes a method. Just as stories live on in memory, superseding our existence, the links between design and theatre begin to emerge. If our eyes represent distance and separation and touch speaks to nearness, intimacy and affection, our separation as an audience member illustrates a spatial concern. The separating barrier of the theatre curtain, a threshold of open and close, reveals and conceals an entire narrative. A world exists on both sides of the curtain; one fictional, one true. This form will manifest and become a central character in the bar. It drapes and flows, like water. It is mediative. Drapery seduces us with its rhythmic and changeable form. It is in endlessness that drapery challenges time, do we become lost? Bodily themes translate across this material choice.
New Zealand artist Jude Rae is the primary influence for the bar. When confronting Raes oil paintings, you are forced to question whether you and even Rae herself has become lost within the fold. Dr Amanda Robbins writes “The folds seem to be never-ending, infinite and yet shallow, the space sculptural and constructed” perfectly illustrating the capacity for complexity within the folds. Clear links emerge in a tiled fabric surface design for the bar. Its placement on the entrance into the theatre marks a dramatic threshold as we step into a world of heightened drama. A bronze communal table drapes down, disappearing into the floor. It is a sculptural centrepiece for the bar, marking its heart. Colour, a crucial aspect in the design, sees washes of earthly tones throughout the interior. This is in efforts to bring an exterioty into the foyer space, reflecting the patchwork of concrete on the St James’ facade. Mineral whites, similar to Raes work, sweep through the bar, a simple backdrop for the theatre of life to play against.
In developing my bar, my work will be mostly digital, using model making to give tactile depth to the experience.
Daniel Eaton 