The model does not propose a recreation of an existing structure, each model is a memory, although often a memory of something that has yet to be encountered. As such the model does not focus on an exact recreation of details - the obsession with the correct number and placing of rivets in the scale model of a tank - textures and layers of paint, dust, produces surfaces that allow interpretation, the idea of time passing by the layers, as if each iteration of the structure had produced a surface that has subsequently been partially obscured.
The layers and textures are that of the slow process of decay, and, as with this entropic process, chance plays a part in what results. The chance flows of paint follow the pull of gravity, the sinking of the structure into the earth, the collapse of the sheltering roof that now provides only partial protection from the ever-present rain.
In scale-models there is the desire to illustrate a story, to produce the vehicle of a specific unit at an historical moment. Scale models therefore are fixed in the flow of time, related to photographs that can be placed in history at an exact moment. Each detail gives the clue to the date, and no great process of detection is required to pull the scale model out of its existence defined by size and into the memory of a once-existing past.
Scale models are seldom uncanny in the manner of a doll’s house, which for all its period detail retains elements that disrupt direct connection with a historical moment. No Lord’s mansion had a frontage that could swing open to reveal the class-structure within.
