Alien Vase

Alien Vase 2017-, ceramic sculpture with Biro drawings

Alien Vase is a work in progress begun in 2017. The sculpture explores fear experienced by civilian communities as an invading army approaches. The sculpture itself is a deconstruction of a Star Wars Storm Trooper and used to emphasise the alarm felt by people upon seeing the unfamiliar uniforms of hostile soldiers particularly in conflicts like WWII.

The sculpture is layered with colour Biro drawings, sculpture tattoos as Jane calls them, of images inspired by the films of Andrei Tarkovsky including Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Andrei Rubelov (1966), and Stalker (1979). Other inspirations are from the film Marketa Lazarová (1967) by František Vláčil and images from WWII magazines.

Drawing details

Jane said:

One of the fallouts of war is people being driven from their homes. I often imagine when the inhabitants have gone, their homes and contents become part of a circumstantial public exhibition of ‘the abandoned’, where individual styles and tastes are displayed and discovered by newcomers, whether wild animals, looters or soldiers passing by. Horses feature a lot in my work as they do in Tarkovsky’s films. They are the epitome of grace, beauty, and with their strong instinct for flight, 'freedom'. The sculpture is in the form of a vase intended for dead flowers.