Photograph

Photograph of 1989 Ford Escort 2 and Photograph of 1989 Ford Escort 3 are images of two sculptures exhibited at Vancouver’s Or Gallery in 2004. The sculptures depicted in these photographs were made through a direct, if laborious, process of using common-grade aluminium foil to “cast” a silver 1989 Ford Escort owned by one of the artists.

The artists worked on site in the gallery gluing together large sheets of foil they bought from a grocery store. They carried these large sheets out to the alley where the car was parked, then systematically cast the car in five sections by carefully embossing the foil on the vehicle. The cast foil sections were removed from the vehicle and brought back inside the gallery, where they were placed on temporary armatures and glued together into a complete cast of the same car. This entire process was then repeated to make a second cast. As each sculpture was glued together, its armature was removed.

The resulting sculptures are completely hollow: each is the thickness of a single sheet of foil. They slowly collapsed over the month-long course of the exhibition.

These works were the first in a series of such casts, which have since been done in many cities. A range of vehicles have been cast, including luxury Sedans, subcompacts, a Hummer and a 1954 Buick Roadmaster.

These large-format photographs were taken to create something that would be an artwork unto itself, as commentary upon the photographic inclinations of the original sculptures.