In 1997, my experimental printed plastics were presented at the Science Museum in London for the opening of its new Challenge of Materials gallery. I developed two works, an inflatable chair and a dress, using techniques I had pioneered at the Royal College of Art for printing highly reflective, holographic effects onto transparent plastic surfaces.
The invitation came through Dr Susan Mossman at the Science Museum, who recognised the potential of my research into the transformation of industrial plastics. It was an exciting opportunity to take work developed through my PhD into a major public institution, where it could enter into dialogue with objects by established designers and manufacturers.
Making Plastic Desirable
My research was concerned with a deceptively simple question: how might we change the way people perceive and value plastics?
At the end of the twentieth century, plastics had become inseparable from everyday life, yet they were increasingly associated with disposability, cheapness and environmental damage. I was interested in whether their cultural value could be transformed through artistic intervention.
Using printing processes adapted from textiles, I developed reflective and holographic surfaces that could be applied to transparent plastic sheeting. When inflated, the material acquired volume while retaining its translucency and flexibility. The printed effects responded to changing light and viewing angles, creating surfaces that appeared to shift between image, ornament and object.
The inflatable chair was particularly interesting because it brought these ideas into the familiar territory of furniture design. A utilitarian object became a vehicle for exploring reflection, colour, transparency and the relationship between material and form.
The dress extended the same enquiry towards the body. Together, the works suggested that plastics could acquire qualities of beauty, visual complexity and cultural significance beyond their conventional industrial uses.
I wanted to challenge the assumption that plastic objects were necessarily temporary or without lasting value. Could an object made from an inexpensive synthetic material become something people wished to preserve? Might its appearance, associations and emotional appeal contribute to a longer life?
The Challenge of Materials
The Science Museum’s Challenge of Materials gallery explored the diversity of materials, their properties and their applications in contemporary life.
Designed by WilkinsonEyre, the gallery opened in 1997 and included a remarkable bridge spanning the museum’s atrium. Suspended by a network of fine wires, its translucent glass-and-steel structure responded to the movement and weight of visitors through sound.
The bridge made material behaviour into a direct physical experience. It was a compelling architectural counterpart to the questions I was exploring in my own work: how materials respond to forces, how their properties shape our experience and how technical innovation can create unexpected aesthetic possibilities.
My inflatable chair was displayed on a podium alongside work by Frank Gehry, an exciting context for an experimental object developed through textile printing and plastics research.
The chair was intended to remain on display, but its life in the gallery proved unexpectedly short. Schoolchildren repeatedly punctured the inflatable structure, and after approximately five months the museum removed it and returned it to me.
There is an irony in this history. I had set out to investigate how plastics might acquire greater cultural value and longevity, yet the chair’s physical vulnerability ultimately determined its time in the exhibition. Its removal demonstrated the tension between an object’s material properties, its intended use and the realities of public display.
A Chair, a Dress and a New Visual Language
The inflatable chair combined transparent plastic construction with highly reflective printed decoration. Its surface changed with the light, creating an interplay between the physical structure and the imagery applied to it.
In a photograph from the period, the chair is modelled by my friend, the actor Micko Westmoreland, shortly after his involvement in Todd Haynes’s film Velvet Goldmine. I like this image because it captures something of the spirit of the work: playful, experimental and visually exuberant.
Although the chair belonged to the world of design, I was approaching it through the concerns of an artist. Its transparent body became a kind of three-dimensional canvas, while the printed surface operated through light, reflection and movement.
The dress explored related possibilities in a different form. Both objects occupied a space between sculpture, design and experimental textile printing.
I was not simply interested in applying decoration to existing products. I wanted the printing process to alter how the material itself was experienced, giving plastic an expressive language of its own.
From the Studio to the Public Domain
The Science Museum commission marked an important stage in my development as an artist.
My PhD research had involved sustained experimentation with industrial materials and unfamiliar printing processes. The museum gave those discoveries a public context and demonstrated that their relevance extended beyond the specialist world of textile research.
It was also the beginning of a longer investigation into the relationship between an artwork and its material support.
The inflatable chair was not a conventional painting, yet its transparent plastic body performed many of the functions of a canvas. It carried colour and image, responded to light and established a physical relationship with the viewer. Unlike a stretched canvas, however, it was filled with air and occupied space as a sculptural object.
This possibility of moving painting beyond the wall would continue to inform my later work with printed textiles, flexible surfaces, draped paintings and architectural installations.
Looking back, I am struck by how much potential remains in these early experiments. The techniques I developed for reflective printing on transparent inflatable plastics have not been exhausted in my practice, and I would welcome the opportunity to explore them again.
The Science Museum presentation was an early demonstration of something I continue to believe: materials are not simply the means through which an artist realises an idea. Their particular properties can generate ideas of their own, opening up forms of expression that might otherwise remain unimaginable.
Exhibition and Commission
Venue: Science Museum, London
Gallery: Challenge of Materials, opened 1997
Commission: Dr Susan Mossman, Science Museum
Works: Experimental inflatable chair and dress using transparent plastics and highly reflective printed surfaces
Display: Inflatable chair exhibited alongside work by Frank Gehry; removed and returned to the artist after approximately five months following repeated punctures
Related research: Royal College of Art, experimental printing and inflatable plastic structures, 1997
Architecture: WilkinsonEyre, Challenge of Materials gallery and bridge, 1997
Photograph: Inflatable chair modelled by actor Micko Westmoreland.