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Archive for the ‘Sculpture’ Category

This is David cutting out one of the props from cardboard.

The cardboard props were then painted and spray painted to add the colour of the foliage.

We set-up the props in the lift before they were all completed to get a sense of what they looked like and what more had to be done.

The lion was painted by myself and Barbara. He was cut out by David. A key element to our scene as Rousseau often used animals in his jungle paintings.

The finished lion.

This is the lift after all our props were made. We set it up for a few hours and videoed people’s reactions to the space.

Blanche takes a journey in the jungle lift!

As the artist we were given was Henri Rousseau we had to come up with an idea for a sculpture in response to the artist’s work. We; Barbara, David and myself, were very interested in Rousseau’s themes of dream-like images using fantasy and creating a magical and fantastical world.

Initially we wanted to design a magical world aimed at children. The idea was that we would set up a scene from a Rousseau painting and, due to the naive aspects of the work, let children explore and discover the environment in 3D.

We also had the idea of some kind of a set design. We were thinking of making props and, once again, a magical world that could be experienced.

Finally we settled on the idea of creating a 3D experience of a Rousseau painting in the lift in the building. We knew that Rousseau wanted people to be taken on a journey through his paintings and we thought what better way than to take this literally! We began by making a maquette to form ideas.
Barbara knitted the chunky background using sawn-off broom handles with pointy ends.

I began by looking at Rousseau’s flowers in his jungle scenes and trying to replicate them. I was aware that I wanted to keep them colourful, playful and naive in the sense that they would not be to complicated. I believed that this would tie in well to Rousseau’s themes.

I made two flowers in total. I rolled up sheets of sugar paper and inserted a length of wire into each one. I then sellotaped this in place and inserted the whole thing into oasis. This process was very time consuming. But the results were close to what I had been aiming for.