Context, Research and Reflections around my Practice
Play – Exquisite Corpse: Critique/my work
The final exquisite corpse collages I created in the workshop
In this workshop, we collaborated as a group in generating lots of images and drawings of objects that could signify body parts – these were all photocopied and scaled in various ways to give us uniformly black and white copies. We were then tasked to create a series of characters with these body parts in collage.
The final works I created are shown above – at the end of the workshop we walked around looking at each other’s work and came together for a brief critique, where we picked out ones we thought worked well and why. My image of the kettle with the moustache (left most on the right hand image) was picked out by several peers as being interesting, for seeming in motion, or suggesting a gesture of dance, due to how I had placed the different pieces at different angles.
There were some forms I was immediately drawn to, and for the middle figure, the two objects that form it seemed to come together perfectly in the first instant. This is the only character for whom I did not go through an iterative process. I especially like how off balance but simultaneously complete it strikes you.
For the left hand figure here, I was keen to make use of this folk icon sculpture, particularly due to the interesting form and large scale. I wanted to play with this sense of solidity with a small or off-balance leg so experimented with a few options.
I settled on the use of the lamp that I liked – it was slender and seemed a precarious leg for this body. Including the lamp head itself also seemed a bit cheeky (something I had initially self-edited)Meanwhile on my second sheet, I liked this other lamp shape for other legs, and also the teapot, but didn’t feel they quite worked together in an interesting way. The middle figure I felt had a bit too much going on, though I was interested in incorporating the eyes somehow – I liked them being detached here from the body itself.
I experimented with the crystal form here and liked it’s use as a head of sorts. It was interesting to me that this and the crab body were natural forms but composed of jutting spikes and I liked the idea of using both to signify different things within the same character.
I realised after trying further with the lampshade/teapot, that the lampshade could do the job of elongating that I was after for the skull – and liked the crab here for arms and some sort of ruffing.
For the 3rd figure on my 2nd sheet, I wanted to incorporate this drawing of some scissors for my legs. I started out trying to build up from it with other structures but found this jarred. I also explored using the distorted image of a victorian gentleman’s head which I liked but it did not work so well. I liked instead the disconnection of the hand which I eventually chose, as despite floating above the scissors it does read as a complete figure.
I experimented then with using the distorted head as the leg of my teapot figure – I liked especially how this immediately communicated dance/skipping to me, and combined with the arms of the teapot came across as a jovial character. Having experimented with some contrasting heads I landed on the moustache which complemented this character well. In my final composition I further exaggerated the jaunty angle this figure was depicted in.
I enjoyed this exercise especially. I think my most successful figures used shapes and forms that I had not myself selected from the material, and I found this allowed me some ‘distance’ to objectively select what I found to be most interested and explore different combinations more easily. The forms I had found (the crab, the lampshades) perhaps did not do as successfully because I had a bias to ensuring they were used and so perhaps working them in where they might not have been entirely best suited? I do like all my figures but I think some (the teapot, the wheel) are more complete than others.
I'm studying a Foundation in Art & Design at Oxford Brookes having previously studied Philosophy and worked in the Market Research industry
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