The green paint arrived for the empty plinth work! The first attempt hasn’t gone too well at all but we’re revising our method and we’re going to prime it with a thin layer of grey so hopefully it’ll stick more to the edges. I don’t think I ever explained the significance of the Aphrodite of Knidos to the work. The artwork itself is a recreation of the plinth for the lost artwork, Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles. The original sculpture was destroyed but hundreds of versions and replicas of it were made across the ancient world, in full size and miniature, even appearing as the design on coins. The sculpture lived on even though its initial form was gone, which is exactly what we’re trying to do here, the footprint enables the statue to keep being remade in people’s minds.
Re-photographed the blue sign with the new production method. Initially, we produced the piece using a vinyl film which was stuck onto the front of the aluminium. Now, we get it sprayed on top and it has a different feeling; much more tactile with the layer of paint.
The better matte painting has arrived and it really is better in every way; the painting is more accurate; the canvas is proper fabric instead of a plastic-y texture. We’ll definitely be using this company for future jobs. Thinking more about getting the Sim paintings fabricated, it would be a lovely grid or line depicting the progress. They would all be made the same size (20 x 25cm) to convey the uniformity of the painting process, both within Sims and in the physical painting process. It’ll be fairly expensive since there’s 10 paintings but it’s just another one of those works that can be put into production once the money is there.
A new idea that’s just at the beginning of being formulated is to do with a device in film-making called a cucoloris. It’s used in lighting for film, theatre and still photography, and it’s a template for casting shadows or silhouettes to produce patterned illumination. They come in a variety of different styles but the objects themselves look almost like abstract artworks. Our initial idea is to make custom cucolorises which would have been used in particular scenes with unique shadows and display them as wall mounted sculptural works. Maybe the scenes will be imaginary or they’ll be ones from actual films, still plenty to think about. They would be laser cut out of wood and we’re still in the process of thinking about how to convey more of the idea of casting shadows.
