Mirror piece
Wood, acrylic, mirrors. Height: 18cm, width: 23cm. June 2021
A sculpture formed of two painted wood blocks placed in the angle between two mirrors.
Mirror-based artwork – multiple reflections inside a cube creating the illusion of the word “OXO”
OXO Cube
Mirrors, paper, acrylic. March 2017
This is one of my prototypes of a mirror-based artwork that I’m developing.
The work consists of four mirrors forming the vertical walls of a cube, with the mirrored surfaces facing inwards. Each mirror reflects the mirror opposite it, including the reflections in that mirror, so the reflections build up to form infinite reflections (or, more accurately, multiple reflections, as the reflections gradually fade due to light loss).
As well as that, where two mirrors meet in the cube’s corners each mirror reflects the other corner mirror, creating a different set of multiple reflections.
In this artwork the design on the cube’s floor forms this image:
In each corner of the cube the semicircle and angled line in that corner is reflected in the mirrors to appear to form the word “OXO”.
Each of these words “OXO” is then reflected infinite times in the other mirrors in the cube.
This artwork is titled “OXO Cube”, as it’s just too good a title to ignore.
A low viewpoint looking into the mirror cube, as below, shows the infinity mirror effect at its best.
Below: a video of the work.
Steel Eye – reflections in a sphere
Steel Eye
Steel ball on ink sketch. 13cm x 13cm x 2cm. August 2018
A steel ball placed on a sketch pad in the centre of a radiating vein-like pattern. The reflections in the sphere give the effect of an eye-like form.
The work can be thought of as a study for a floor-based sculpture with a large steel sphere placed on a floor onto which the radiating vein-like lines are applied. It works very well at a small scale however, with the steel ball approximately the same size as a human eye. The intimate size of the small version makes this version quite unsettling, while a larger version would possibly be less unsettling but more visually intriguing (because the reflections in the ball wouldn’t invoke so precisely a human eye).
The initial concept came to me while working on a different project involving a steel ball (but not reflections) on a sheet of paper. I noticed that the reflection of the white paper and the room on the ball gave the impression of the white of an eye and the iris of the eye.
Buttercup field with hidden object
Buttercup Field, Rosemorran, Zennor
Video. 27sec
A video of a field of buttercups that contains a hard-to-see object.
The object is revealed at the end of the video.
The video is on a recurring theme in my work – an investigation into perception, reality and illusion.
The video was taken behind my house at Lower Rosemorran, Zennor, in Cornwall.
Spoiler alert – the nature of the object in the video is revealed in the next section.
The scene in the video contains, on the ground amongst the grass and buttercups, a square mirror. The mirror is hard to see partly because of the distracting proliferation of buttercups, but mostly because the mirror is positioned so that the light from the sky doesn’t create give-away shadows or highlights (buttercups that are reflected in the mirror can look abnormally lit compared with the rest of the buttercups if the angle of the light is incorrect).
The work is filmed in an almost cliched, very peaceful and calming field full of spring flowers, which to me makes a nice setting for a work that at its most pretentious can be interpreted as being a prompt for questioning the nature of reality. At its least pretentious however, it’s just a nice visual joke.
Mirrors and reflections are common features of my work, as can be seen in the Mirror Art section of this site.
Metamorphosis of a Human Hand into an Alien Life-form
Metamorphosis: March 2018
This is an early version of a project that I’m working on: it shows a video of a hand in which the video is flipped as a mirror image in order to create a strikingly bizarre image resembling an alien creature.
The video is an attempt to highlight the way that even the things that we treat as totally normal and mundane are in fact full of strangeness and wonder.
In the video I’ve used the simple technique of mirroring something as a way of removing it from its normal context. Thus I’ve made something that’s as ridiculously familiar to us as our hands look so ridiculously alien and disconcerting. Who’d have thought that you had such strange things stuck on the ends of your arms?
Shoe reflected in a mirror – the art of illusion
This is a version of a piece of art that I’m working on, based on a pair of shoes and a mirror. The shoes are positioned so that the reflection of each in the mirror coincides exactly with the other shoe on the opposite side of the mirror, merging the real shoe and the reflection of the other shoe into one.
Like a lot of my works that involve illusion this one explores the line between reality and our interpretation of what we perceive.
Coloured rods and a mirror used to question the interpretation of perception
Colour Discontinuity 3: March 2017
A colored rod reflected in a mirror, positioned so that the reflection of the rod coincides with another rod of a different color on the other side of the mirror, creating an ambiguous optical effect.
A study of ambiguous visual stimuli to question the nature of perception and the interpretation of reality.
Art and science – String Theory with nylon cord and mirrors
String Theory: Mirrors, cord and light source: January 2017: width 30cm height 30cm
A study for a work composed of mirrors that are configured so that they create reflections round a symmetrical axis and also create reflections in infinite regression.
The reflected object in this work is a single short length of coloured cord (about 40cm long). The cord is brightly coloured and is lit by a directional light source which gives the cord the effect of being a pulsating energy stream in a containment vessel, perhaps in a high energy physics laboratory.
Shoes with mirror image
Shoes with mirror image: January 2013
A pair of shoes and a mirror, with the shoes positioned so that the reflection of the shoe in the mirror coincides exactly with the other shoe on the opposite side of the mirror, thus merging the real shoe with the reflection of the other shoe.
Like a lot of my works that involve illusion this one explores the line between reality and our interpretation of what we perceive.
Odd shoes reflected in a mirror
Odd shoes reflected in a mirror: January 2013
Part of a series of works involving the reflection of shoes in a mirror, with the shoes positioned so that the reflection of each shoe in the mirror coincides exactly with the other shoe on the opposite side of the mirror.
In this work the shoes involved are not a pair.
This creates a double dissonance in the viewer. Firstly the viewer has to interpret the fact that the reflected part of the shoe is not part of the other shoe, and secondly the viewer has to interpret the fact that the two shoes are different (with the degree of difference varying depending on the position of the viewer and thus the amount of the shoe that is behind the mirror that is visible).
Like a lot of my works that involve mirrors and reflections this one explores the line between reality and our interpretation of what we perceive.
Mirror based art with reflections of screws
Mirrors and screws: March 2017
A study of reflections using mundane everyday objects to create interesting formations.
Here ordinary hardware screws are arranged to form a dynamic expansive configuration.
Screws lend themselves to this study partly because of their physically dynamic shape – large at one end and then tapering away at the other – and partly because of their intended purpose, which is to hold things in place – the exact opposite of dynamic expansiveness – which brings a slight touch of paradox to the work.
Anyone looking at the image who feels that I ought to have lined up the screw heads – it’s a deliberate act not to have aligned them, even though in real life I am an obsessive screw head aligner.
Contemporary art: mirrors + multiple reflections = illusions.
An example of one of my projects in the field of contemporary art exploring mirrors, reflections and illusions, here using a piece of cord that is reflected multiple times to give the impression of a closed circle.
This work consists of three mirrors creating a triangular box with the reflective surfaces facing inwards. The box is placed over a length of brightly coloured meandering paracord. The cord is laid so that the section that lies inside the triangular box is reflected on the box’s sides to give the illusion of forming a circle. The second photo shows the piece from a different angle to show the structure.
Metamorphosis of a hand into a sinister life-form by multiple reflection
Metamorphosis
Mirrors and hand. October 2016
Three mirrors forming the vertical sides of a triangular box turn a hand into an alien creature by multiple reflections. The hand is intruding into the box through an opening in the corner.
The artwork is an exploration of how a familiar object (a hand) can be transformed into something completely alien purely by the use of simple mirrors.
A study of the familiar becoming unfamiliar via a mundane agency. When the fingers of the hand move the effect is surprisingly disturbing (I’ll make a video of it when I can).
Coloured rods aligned with a mirror
Colour Discontinuity 2: March 2017
A colored rod reflected in a mirror, positioned so that the reflection of the rod coincides with another rod of a different color on the other side of the mirror, creating an ambiguous optical effect.
A study in the perception and interpretation of ambiguous visual stimuli.
Coloured rods and mirror creating colour discontinuity
Colour Discontinuity 1: July 2015
A coloured rod reflected in a mirror so that the reflection of the rod coincides with a differently coloured rod on the other side of the mirror, creating an ambiguous optical effect.
A study in the perception and interpretation of ambiguous visual stimuli.