My previous sculpture reminded me of the traditional Chinese practices of binding women’s feet. This struck inspiration to use people as the deformed object in nature I’ve been searching for. Hajime Kinoko, a Japanese bondage artist takes inspiration from binding and deformity in how women are sexualized in Japanese culture. His work interests me as his visuals of wrapping the women in rope in inhumane positions is exactly what I’ve been doing with my sculptures just with different materials.
I took some photographs of me wrapped in bondage style rope to begin this strand of using my own body as a material to manipulate in this project. I created collages of some of these photographs that work well as they highlight how I’ve made myself an object purely there to be manipulated. This brings me back to the walk and how many people in the world currently are feeling manipulated beyond their control. Another view could be how women are objectified on the streets and seen as a possession whose only purpose is to please the male eye.
Hajime Kinoko:
These sculptures were also inspired by Yayoi Kusama’s phallic sculptures and infinity rooms. I love how she uses the infinity of life in both these works with the figurative yet lifeless aspect which stems from a dark place of her sexual trauma.
Yayoi Kusama:
Bondage in the snow: Sculpture made from cotton material, stuffing, rope, and acrylic paint.
This sculpture is inspired by the half-melted snowmen in the streets on the snow day. I used a rope to bind the material to give the sculpture a tight, trapped look and a sense of man-made deformity. I purposely followed up the figurative style of my previous concrete sculptures but this differs in a way that I wanted to recreate the man-made distortion I see other than natural, this is why I used unnatural materials replicating a man-made object (snowman).
Acrylic print on material on canvas. Inspired by subtle marks and colours found on my body and clothes after my walk.
These prints remind me of Antoni Tapies’s paintings. The textures in his paintings is the only thing missing in my prints. I’m going to experiment with similar style prints/paintings but add some texture such as concrete or aspects of textiles.
Antoni Tapies:
Acrylic painting on canvas. Inspired by the dried flowers and trees during this time of the year.
Banksy Dismaland:
When I was 13 I visited this exhibition and it has influenced my art ever since. The bleak, English aspect of this exhibition along with the political and comedic threads is something I love and strive for in my art. My concrete sculptures along with the apocalyptic atmosphere of life at the moment brought me back to this exhibition and the decaying of life.
Concrete, dried flowers and spray paint on canvas inspired by the uprising of street art due to the abandoned streets during lockdown.
Concrete sculptures filled with dried plants. I used concrete as I am focussing on real materials that surround me on my walk. I really like the figurative aspect of the sculptures created in a twisted plastic bag. I like how the first 2 sculptures look as if they’re decaying, it gives the feeling of death and nature.
Close-ups of my ice sculpture.
This is an ice sculpture filled with plants found from my given walk. I used ice as it’s a natural product I’m surrounded by whilst I go on my walk in this cold weather.
Acrylic, spray paint, and dirt painting on canvas. these paintings are inspired by my mud sketchbook page from the first time I went on my walk. I went on the walk again and collected some mud and used this as a pigment. This inspired the idea of only using natural products found on the walk as work for this project.
The round marks in these pieces are key to the figurative aspect I want the derive project to have. The round marks show the echo of life I felt whilst on the walk and in the world in general. The circular marks combined with the dirt and colour scheme make these pieces a visual representation of the atmosphere on the streets.
My sketchbook pages I produced while on my walk remind me of Basquiat’s paintings. His graffiti style and mark-making inspired me to create my larger pieces on canvas.
Basquiat
Sketchbook Pages:
All pages represent the visual and emotional aspects of my walk. Pages are completed with charcoal, biro, monoprint.
