The Great Escape
The Great Escape | 2007
- Size
- Variable
- Medium
- Wooden clock-cases, wallpaper, butterflies and clockwork parts
- Exhibition
- New Majestic Hotel Bar (2007), Singapore
This site-specific installation recreates the environment and bug-like denizens of a tree’s trunk, through the use of found objects. Antique wooden clocks and their interior working mechanisms are playfully transformed into spiders and homes for butterflies. The interior surfaces of the clock-cases are covered with wallpaper, bringing to mind the original domestic environment of these clocks. Yet, the same green flowery wallpaper also evokes the atmosphere of a leafy environment, strengthening the illusion of being a tree’s trunk’s habitat.
Apart from the artificial recreation of a natural enviroment, there is also a hidden sub-narrative in the installation that echoes familiar fairy tale themes of transformation, metamorphosis and the double - the clock mechanisms have escaped the constraints of their wooden cases by turning into “insects” with pendulum heads and clockwork bodies. Mysteriously, while the fake insects are scuttling freely outside the clock-cases, real insects are trapped in their stead within.