Specialist Project

(This was written during year 2 of my BA Sculpture Degree at Carmarthen School of Art 2020)

Specialist Project Evaluation

This is an attempt to map my progression and development throughout this term. I believe I have developed a lot during this module, and my art has changed dramatically.

I started this module with a sculpture I made last term, The Virgin Android.

The Virgin Android, 2019 Pregnancy Droid Poster, 2020

I believed this was the best sculpture I had made, and wanted to carry on from here in the current module. I started looking into the religion side of this piece, and began to look into how we treat contemporary brands as religion, such as a pilgrimage to Mc Donalds etc.. And started to create a body of work around this idea.

Love Coke, 2020 The Crown Dons, 2020 Virgin Metals, 2020

I enjoyed creating a world around these ideas, I create a religion called the Cocalorians, a sci fi concept where the world had gone to shit and the forgotten religion of Christianity had gotten lost, and merged with the Coca-Cola brand over time, and the New religion is the only thing that could save the country, becoming the political party, and religion of the country. I liked the idea, but seemed very forced, and felt like I wasn't fully exploring what I was capable of.

I started doing life sculpting… I found that my life sculpting was quick and rough, but had a lot more weight and energy to it than my usual practice of slower sculpting from images.

Life sculpted angel, 2020 Comparison, 2020

A comparison between a life sculpt and one that I’d sculpted without a live model shows how stiff and unlife-like it looks without the forms in 3D view in front of me. After a week or so of trying to work things out, and a few chats with lecturers which really helped my development, I started playing around with all the pieces I had made over the last few terms, this included finished pieces, life sculpts and little sketches I had done.

I started putting pieces together, and it totally changed what the pieces were saying, and from here I discovered a new, more organic way of working.

I carried on with this process into the beginning of lockdown and created my exhibition pieces with this method.

Returned Item, 2020 ? Rejected casts, 2020

I really enjoyed not thinking about the process of coming up with a detailed idea, before doing any sculpting. I think it’s come from filmmaking where I’d come up with an idea and then write the script. At first it was surreal to say, yeah I’m just gonna make a load of babies, and see what happens. And without doing that, I wouldn’t have come up with ‘Rejected Casts’, which I think is one of my most powerful pieces. It was simply an experiment to see how the babies would look together, which turned into a pile of babies. I didn’t know what it meant before I did it and it ended up being a very exciting process.

I carried on working in a similar manner during lockdown. I wanted to carry on with the same theme of how branding and consumerism affects our kids from a young age, but I started playing around with latex and found a connection with the latex gloves everyone is now wearing.

I started by covering one of my babies in skin coloured latex. I found the textured very interesting, straight on top of the plasticine, and even the tea bag stained patination showed through the latex giving a grungy look.

Latex baby, 2020

I mixed blue paint with latex after seeing the connection.

I created this piece with the blue latex, I don’t really know what it is. But I had some blue latex left so I painted some gloves on one of the exhibition pieces.

Need Bog Roll? 2020

I played around with a few ideas, and started thinking about the news reports and how they say that we should treat every surface as if it’s infected. And so I got some glow in the dark paint, relating back to my research on glow in the dark and UV earlier in the term.

Don’t touch this, 2020

I felt that my research into glow in the dark and UV was a little bit of a gimmick when I was experimenting with it earlier on in the term. But when I used it for this reason, it felt a lot more sophisticated, and had a good reason for being there. Aesthetically I think it helps bring the ‘covid town’ to life at night, and helps create the surreal feeling that we’re all currently feeling with these alien changes to life.

I set up my covid town residents on our dresser and my wife walked in and asked why they were naked. It made me think about it, and I didn’t really know, but I did know that if they were clothed it would change the feel of it completely, the same if they had hair, I realised later on. The characters being nude, I think gives the feel that they are vulnerable, as we all are every time we leave our houses, I definitely feel naked when I’m walking round the co-op, with only a pair of latex gloves to protect you.

I feel my work has developed massively since the start of the term, and I feel I have found a voice. I didn’t realise it before but my work seems to have a surrealist nature to it, a pile of babies, robot mothers, gigantic rubber gloves. I have never seen myself at all as a surrealist artist, as I thought my work was too serious or something. I don’t believe I would have kept the massive gloves in my work at the start of the term, but now I can't see these pieces without them, they don’t make sense, and I like it.

Over the last few years I have been on and off reading a book called the Human Zoo by Desmond Morris, a zoologist who compares humans to animals, and caged animals to humans trapped in a city. The book goes through the evolution of man from caveman to the modern city dweller. I’ve used the book as a storytelling device in my essay this term. I plan to carry on studying the works of Desmond Morris in his books, the naked ape and the artistic ape, and I’ve also bought a book called The Humans who went extinct- Why the neanderthals died out. I’m very interested in how we got from there to here as consumers, and want to explore these ideas in future work.