TATTOOED TUMOUR BOX

This sculpture evolved from the artist’s interest in applying organic-looking structural developments (that have gone awry) to very geometric forms. In this case Chisnall has taken as his inspiration the mechanism of a cancer cell, where growth has gone unchecked and produced an unstable-looking, asymmetrical form. The ‘tattooed’ element of the piece harks back to growing up with a tattooist father but the style of the drawings relate more to his early career as a technical illustrator. As for the subject of the drawings – the starting point was based upon found materials that he had collected for use in his sculptures, but which he chose to morph together or exaggerate beyond recognition.
Chisnall says that as with most of his artistic projects, he underestimated just how long the drawing side of the work would take. There are several reasons for this. One being the fact that all the drawings are quite intricate and time consuming to develop from scratch, especially since he planned for all the elements to have their own unique qualities whilst still looking like they could coexist in the same universe. Put together, all the forty four separate planes of the sculpture’s components add up to a much larger surface area than one might expect.
Another reason that the drawing process took so long is that each sketch had to be done four separate times – firstly worked out as a pencil sketch in one of the artist’s sketchbooks, then traced in ink onto tracing paper, thirdly, transferred onto the sculpture using carbon paper and drawing over the image on the tracing paper, and finally there would be the time consuming task of inking in the carbon ghost image on the sculpture’s wooden surface.
Initially, Chisnall started off the drawing process by rendering elements of miscellaneous found objects, and morphing them together but once he got into the flow of it, and started to really develop a feel for the world that my drawings evolved from, he mostly abandoned the use of existing source materials, and opted for the freedom of simply making it all up.
To give you a little insight into the multiple processes that he ‘lovingly’ went through (often whilst working through the night, till five or six the next morning) constructing Tattooed Tumour Box, we have included a few of the pencil sketches, tracings, and inked-in sections of the sculpture’s surface.
Incidentally, the sculpture is made up of cut-up pieces of antique packing crates, sourced from the Victoria and Albert Museum. You can even see sections of old labels, stencilled numbers, and part of the lettering of “V. & A. M.”, branded into the wood in a charming early twentieth century typeface.
There are lots of drawn elements of the piece that the artist especially enjoyed creating, and one of them is the underside of the base section of the sculpture, and therefore probably the part that is least likely to be seen. So we thought that we’d give it an airing here. As the circular hole in the centre is for the insertion of the pole that makes up part of the work’s metal stand, Chisnall thought that he’d make it a feature of the overall design, and incorporated a sphincter element to the drawing. The sigils which appear within to outer ring reference occult interests as well as being a tribute to the flamboyantly entertaining comic book writer, Grant Morrison.