Bodger: Start of the Week

The plan was fairly straight forward; using freely available materials from skips etc’ I am planning to create a wood turning lathe, and by the end of the week I hope to be turning billets of green wood! The image shows the materials I have assembled by Monday afternoon;- a couple of doors, some pieces of softwood and some lengths of threaded bar.

This work is a continuation of my art practice which is concerned with the notions of the functional art object, the ad-hoc development of tools from everyday or waste materials and the place of ‘making’ in contemporary art practice. Like a ‘bodger’ I have arrived with a small bag of useful items and intend to use what I can find in order to create the tools that I need. The interest in the role of traditional woodland crafts further extends my recent interrogation of marginal lifestyles and the urban/rural binary.

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