Layered Acrylic Sculpture by Elyssa Sykes-Smith with Allplastics

Potential realized at Sculpture by The Sea

Layered Potential by artist Elyssa Sykes-Smith is a site-specific installation that explores the psychological state of the layering of ideas to arrive at new and unexpected conclusions. The artwork includes on figure depicted in a gesture of reaching our and projecting shapes and colours, symbolic of layered ideas, into the space.

Layered Potential was created using a selection of acrylic, sourced, and pre-fabricated, at Allplastics Engineering: Perspex and polycarbonate. Sykes-Smith utilised a variety of Perspex elements to create the figure including translucent, opaque, frosted, mirrored, and fluorescent elements.

The materials presented many sculptural possibilities as they were able to be cut and joined, manipulated through heat, and etched into. While being solid elements to sculpt with they also achieved alight, painterly effect when translucent or semi-translucent elements were overlapped. The abstract shapes separate to the figure were cut from a sheet of UV polycarbonate, chosen for its strength and flexibility in a high wind area with 250,000 visitors from the public. The clear, transparent panels were then drawn onto and coloured with a translucent spray paint.

The artwork was originally designed to be exhibited in the naturally theatrical setting of Sculpture by the Sea, Cottesloe 2018. Suspended high up between two tall pin trees, the artwork maximised the stunning backdrop of the sky which acted to highlight the overlapping shapes and colours of the polycarbonate panels. Sykes-Smith was curious to work with the ephemeral quality of light and selected acrylic for this purpose. The variety of materials reacted in a magical way as the light changed throughout the day with a particularly strong finale at sunset, which produced the effect of a moving paining in the sky.

"We are thrilled by the outcome of the installation by Elyssa," commented Vic Kalloghlian, Managing Director of Allplastics. "She has managed to combine a variety of elements from our extensive range to achieve an abstract statement in a public venue."

Allplastics supplies, cuts, and fabricates a diverse range of materials, including Perspex, polycarbonates, composite panels, translucent AIR-Board, and Pepcore. Our materials have a myriad of applications and are often the first choice for public art installations, museums, galleries, and exhibitions. You will see many of our products incorporated into exhibitions at events such as Vivid and Sculpture by the Sea.