Elizabeth Wright describes her sculptures as like photographs. In their insistence of ‘reality’, through laborious exacting facsimile, they confound and please in playing cleverly between that which we perceive to be familiar and yet distant.
The objects that Wright represents through the creation of her sculptures share common reference in that they are all mass-produced consumer goods. These objects have developed a body of meanings through their collective identity, through proliferation. The introduction of a ‘unique’ member within these groups dislocates our relationship with the object. With Wright’s works, we encounter a reproduction of a reproduction but which is an ‘original’. They are the same in every way to the objects that we know except for one crucial detail, they are fractionally enlarged.
Mini-Escort consists of a production-line Ford Escort XR3i placed in close proximity to an Austin Mini that has been scaled up to 130% of its actual commercial size. Wright’s other works have consisted of Stolen Bicycle, 1998 where a bicycle wheel was enlarged by 165%, Pizza Delivery Moped, 1998 enlarged by 145% and B.S.A. Tour of Britain Racer, 1997 enlarged by 135%.
Wright is a graduate of The Royal College of Art and Birmingham Polytechnic and has shown internationally since 1990. Mini-Escort was commissioned by the Norwich Gallery, Norwich School of Art and Design for riverside 1999.