CONTAINER SERIES
This final series of research works focuses on what intended and unintended impacts are delivered to people and places through the movement and utilization of shipping containers.
The works in this series can be presented as individual objects and/or as a system of stacked structures. When compiled into constructions, these sculptures work together to display a range of ideas about the unintended deliveries of shipping containers. As separate sculptures, their individual content and form can be inspected in relation to their own context and inadvertent impact.
As a full collection, the stacked scale of the works can become physically measurable to that of an individual and also reference the shape of a cityscape. Together they refer to the segmentation of space and the diversity of their final forms can suggest that there might more containers elsewhere waiting to be collected and considered.
Through the creation of this work, I discovered that by utilizing visually and physically open sculptural forms; incorporating layering, multiples, familiar symbols/structures and the variation of common elements; I could create a visual system that could relay the complexity of shipping container systems and the impact of their use to provide a significant contribution to the discussions of its effects on individuals, communities and places through contemporary art practice.
This research has revealed to me that the (un)intended impacts of the shipping container are delivered in how it connects people, places and spaces. The study of its effect is also one of the global alignment of histories and the compression of separate spaces. I argue that the impact of these unintended effects is obfuscated by their delivery over time and the complexity of the expanded role of the container in its globalised use for transport.
With this work, I endeavour to make sculptural objects to better understand the object of the shipping container by holding still their itinerant form and allowing to look within the closed confines of their corrugated shell to see all that it has come to deliver. I assert that this peripatetic portal connects distant individuals, landscapes, cultures, communities, economies and political systems through the seemingly unassuming transport of goods. In doing so, the modern shipping container has come to deliver the unexpected.
