In 1997, I presented a collection of experimental printed inflatable sculptures at the Royal College of Art’s Work in Progress exhibition, alongside fellow artists and designers from the School of Materials. The works introduced a technique I had been developing for combining highly reflective printed surfaces with transparent, inflatable plastics, opening up new possibilities for colour, light, pattern and three-dimensional form.
I was exploring how industrial sheet plastics could be transformed through textile printing processes. By applying reflective decorative effects to transparent surfaces and then inflating them, I could create objects in which the printed image interacted with the volume of air inside. Light passed through the plastic, bounced off the reflective surfaces and changed according to the viewer’s position.
The results were quite unlike conventional printed textiles or solid sculpture. The structures were simultaneously transparent and reflective, substantial and almost weightless. Their surfaces appeared to move between image and object, while the air within became an essential part of their form.
What excited me was the possibility of developing a new visual language for plastics. Rather than treating the material as a substitute for fabric, glass or another familiar medium, I wanted to discover qualities particular to plastic itself.
At the time, I was unaware of anyone else combining these printing and inflatable construction techniques in quite this way. The process allowed me to produce effects that I could not achieve through conventional textile printing, painting or sculpture.
The work subsequently attracted the attention of Dr Susan Mossman at the Science Museum, who commissioned me to develop further applications of the technique for the museum’s materials gallery. Related experiments also informed the inflatable works selected for the British Council’s touring exhibition of Royal College of Art graduates, which continued through 2000.
Looking back, I regard these early sculptures as an important foundation for my later work with flexible painted surfaces, translucency, reflection and light. They introduced the possibility that a printed surface could become a self-supporting spatial object rather than remain attached to a conventional support.
I am still interested in returning to this technology. Its combination of reflective printing, transparency and inflatable construction remains an underexplored resource in my practice, with considerable potential for new sculptural and architectural applications.
The 1997 works were not simply experiments on the way to something else. They established a distinctive approach to material transformation that continues to inform how I think about painting and sculpture today.
Exhibition Details
Exhibition: Work in Progress, Royal College of Art, London, 1997
Context: School of Materials, Class of 1997
Works: Experimental printed inflatable sculptures using transparent sheet plastics and highly reflective surface-printing techniques
Related developments: Science Museum materials-gallery commission, following the 1997 experiments; British Council touring exhibition of Royal College of Art graduates, 1998–2000.