If you spend any time at all on “make your own” sites on the internet and/or have school-age children around you, you’ve heard about slime. This gooey paste-like blobby material that you can apparently make yourself – and has absolutely no purpose other than keep your hands busy while making your mind go “ewwww!”, “ooooh!”, “aaaah!” as you manipulate it, and then “yikes!” when it unexpectedly lands on your clothes or in your friends’ hair.
This is the material Tam had decided to explore during her residency – joined happily by Mish, who also spent time doodling, letter printing, recreating images, sounds and texts seen during their recent trip to Bali.
This slime exploration soon became the main focus of the time spent by the 2 artists in the space. The exploration took many forms – from experimenting with various recipes, to exploring new artistic uses for the medium. Much time was spent on the process, understanding the physics of the medium, rather than aiming for a specific aesthetic outcome.
One of the early, and exciting outcomes resulting from discovering the slime’s properties was a kind of “forest” created by letting slime drip on a prepared landscape.
One of the early examples, recorded by Tam:
The teachers were invited early on to observe the material, the process and get an understanding of the potential of the material, as well as understand how the children could be interacting in their environment.
Eventually, throughout the month of July, the experiments became focused, as the artists tried different glues, different additions, and tried making art pieces from the resulting material. What Tam says: “When it dries, it becomes hard. The pattern is set. But we might still cut up the design to make something new from it”.
It seems that the potential of slime is unlimited.
