Hide and Seek
2022
Wood, paint, oils, canvas cut-outs, 43cm x 200cm each
Four Eyes
Wood, spray paint, 30 cm x 60cm each 2022
Every life has a purpose
Amber cast glass, (Young and Old) light box plinths, 2006
Exhibited in Island 6 Arts Centre, Shanghai, China as part of British Council Artists Link Residency, works developed for the Shanghai Biennale Off-Site exhibition, Less Travelled.
“Two life scale branches have been cast in glass. The young branch is pure and untainted. The old shows the passage of time. It now lies disassembled. It has been a preoccupation of the artist whilst in China to research manufacturing. The word manufacturing comes from the Latin words, manu by hand and facto – made. In todays society, we associate manufacture with mass production. The branches go back to the roots of manufacture and are made by hand. They serve as a sharp contrast to the speed and transience of today’s production line. Like the Chinese ancient artefacts of the past, the production is slow, the outcome more layered and the life span prolonged.
Imminent
Kitchen Cupboard periscope, Shanghai art deco houseware, 2006
Exhibited in Island 6 Arts Centre, Shanghai, China as part of British Council Artists Link Residency, works developed for the Shanghai Biennale Off-Site exhibition, Less Travelled.
An old kitchen cupboard is suspended near a window, relocation is imminent. Imminent – impending, about to occur, present participle of imminire – to overhang. Within the cupboard, an integrated periscope reveals a constructed scene. Through the lower chamber, objects appear in distorted planes. An illusion is created and deconstructed. The old encases the new.
To be continued
Resin (cast segments of a bamboo ladder- top - middle – bottom
Exhibited in Island 6 Arts Centre, Shanghai, China as part of British Council Artists Link Residency, works developed for the Shanghai Biennale Off-Site exhibition, Less Travelled.
Of the hand is a working
Pipe, blown glass, perpex box, 20cm x 20cm x 20cm
This artwork is part of an ongoing series of works, first started in 2006 as part of the British Council Artists Link residency in China. This period of research in China was around toy manufacture and foreign export and was the beginning of Boggon exploring handmade glass both cast and blown. We associate the word manufacture with that of the mass-produced, however, the Latin origin of the word derives from the Latin manus “of the hand” and factura “a working” Boggon is interested in these contradictions in meaning and in what is lost and found in translation, both culturally and through evolution, hence the title of the piece.
A pipe seen in the context of the history of art cannot but refer to Magritte’s famous painting “This is not a pipe”
“Of the hand is a working” combines a pink glass bubble gum with a manufactured pipe to create a cartoon-like puff.
Façade
Chinese reproduction painting box, purchased Panjiayuan Antiques Market, (formerly known as ghost market) Beijing
A reproduction painting carrier, bought from Panjiayuan Antiques Market is converted into a periscope. Using the idea of a journey the opening to the box reveals not a Chinese landscape painting but the view of a corridor leading to the façade of a house. The exit point of the periscope acts as a frame to the small ornate scene, an illusion is created. All is not as it seems, visible from the exterior, perched on the top is a different picture, that of a site in flux. Façade references journeys and change. It questions the idea of nostalgia, novelty, authenticity, the fake and the contradictions that lie behind such illusions. Literally translated the word façade means “the face or front of a building…. or an outward appearance maintained to conceal a less pleasant or credible reality“ It is not always easy to decipher reality as much is staged for the “needs” of the audience. Old buildings are sometimes replaced by reproductions and new objects are manufactured to look like antiques.
The White House
Renovated Dolls House, LCD screens, video, moving image of shadows, 2004
Within
Grandfather clock periscope, mixed media
Drive in, Check Out
Shipping Crate, miniature cars, video, lcd screen, 2004
A wooden crate contains a miniature drive in cinema, a barren, remote car park containing model cars. The small screen projects disjointed footage taken from films. The imagery flits between drive in scenes from cult films and the subliminal. It is a contained scene that speaks of escape and duality. A set within a set.
Box
cardboard box, model window
“In her sculpture ‘Box’, a model-maker’s window has been set into one side of a used cardboard carton (the kind a tortoise would hibernate in) with its top flaps folded tight. As she has said, “when you’re a child, you make houses and shelters everywhere, out of anything. I wanted to make a piece of work relating to that state of innocence”
"In the same way that phrases of music or lines of poetry will come to mind, particularly when experiences overwhelm us, certain sculptures came back to me. They were remembered in uncanny detail and somehow became entirely present…..a little box-house by Anna Boggon: artworks with a lightness of heart that my unconscious had stored away for when I might need them". Angela Kingston
