Plinths, Foam, Blind Embossing, Sherlock Holmes

Been making some very slow progress with the missing sculpture plinth. Got another few layers of different colours of paint on and it’s looking a bit better. Still plenty of progress to be made but also just getting to grips with what works best in terms of colours and masking options. It’s definitely going to be a slow burner to be chipped away at when possible. 

Got some quotes back for making the fictional gun foam insert. Some were surprisingly expensive but the more I looked the better it got. The other thing was that the price was significantly reduced when buying a few at a time. Looks like they’re going to be additions of 3 or 4 depending on the size. 

We’ve been thinking more about the display of them and initially be thought they would be good in the Perspex boxes we’ve been making for others works. However, after discussing it a bit further we thought that an aluminium tray frame would be more consistent with the idea. It would also be powder coated to match the grey of a Peli case. We’ve also landed on a title for this series of works; every work will be The Division of Perspective and then in brackets there will be the name of the weapon or tool. Dividing perspective is a method of showing a 3 dimensional object in 2 dimensional space. This addition of a dimension is exactly what we’re attempting to do with these fictional objects; give them a life beyond the screen, another perspective. 

There have been some open calls we’ve been finding and today we saw one for paper artworks to be exhibited at Manchester library and it made us think about a work we’ve had on the list for a while. It’s all to do with writing indentation clues in films; when people write a letter or a note, it's possible that the pressure of their pen or pencil will create indentations not just on the paper they're writing on, but on any paper that's underneath it, too. In some sorts of story (particularly Mystery Fiction, though not exclusively), making use of this fact is a well-established investigative technique. If you want to know what someone wrote on a notepad but the note is no longer there, just look at the next piece, possibly shading it with a pencil to bring out the contrast. 

It’s the invisibility and discovery aspects that really interested us and it reminded us of blind embossing/debossing; a printing technique that doesn't use ink, where you stamp a mark of something into a material, leaving an indentation. We wanted to create a work where a small scrap of paper had something blind embossed onto it but wasn’t scribbled over like in films, it’s still invisible, still waiting to be discovered. After researching further into it, we found that it was mentioned by Sherlock Holmes when telling Watson how he got his information as "a fact that has dissolved many a happy marriage". However, in this case, he uses the blotting paper to obtain the reverse message, as the writer had used a pen. We then decided that we would both use the quote and blotting paper for the piece. In terms of display, the scrap is going to be shown in a white frame, and within a wonkily angled mount. The idea here was that we’re continually adding elements to the piece but since they’re all of the same colour they’re not actually enabling the note to be seen more directly. Usually a frame and a mount are used to point out the object within, but these ones don’t manage that. We’re going to call it You see, but you do not observe, which is another Sherlock Holmes quote.

Painting the Aphrodite of Knidos plinth, new photos of old works, improved matte painting, new cucoloris work

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.

Artists and Friends Podcast, Matte paintings, and the point of view gun from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

And another week just slips by scarily quickly…The podcast is continuing to take up a lot of my time but I’m really enjoying it! And I would prefer to be over prepared than under prepared. And I’m especially enjoying it now that we’ve got people coming on to be interviewed and we get to talk to them about their process and particular work; that really makes it very fulfilling and so different to just discuss people without them being there. We’ve got an episode coming out tomorrow with Robyn Nichol who’s an artist we’ve really enjoyed for some time and have actually bought some of her work previously. We’re also doing an episode on Channel 4 Random Acts videos and interviewing a couple of really great artists, Zaiba Jabbar & Cath Shayler, who have previously produced films with them. 

But things are still slowly progressing with our own work. We’ve decided which fictional weapon will be the first to be cut out of foam; it’s going to be the point of view gun from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The way the gun works in the film is that when fired at someone it makes them see things from the person that fired it’s point of view. And this feels like the most appropriate one we’ve found so far, considering it’s very similar to what writers, or set designers, or directors are doing when they produce a film, or a book, or a play; enabling people to see your point of view, building a story or item from your mind and putting it into the physical world so an audience can see it too. We’ve decided that all the foam pieces are going to be black on the top layer and then colour beneath is going reference the colour of the original weapon or tool, in this case yellow. I’ve included an outline and reference image to both the weapon and the foam example below. 

The first matte painting test arrived! It looks really great on the wall and it’s lovely to see one of these in the flesh! I’ve been living with it in the house and it hasn’t felt too dark and dingy to have up which is something I was worried about. A slightly strange turn of events is that another company that I asked for a quote has accidentally completed another painting of the same scene. This painting actually looks a bit better than the one we already have; the detailing is just that little bit more defined and it’s an overall more accurate copy of the original image. We’re getting sent that one as well and we’re potentially just going to give the first one away to someone as an undocumented piece – or perhaps it’ll be an edition of 1 with 1 artist proof, who knows! I've linked both paintings below, I feel like you can definitely tell which is better.

New film proposal, Matte painting progress, Sim paintings, Podcast devlopments

This week has been a little quieter for our own making. We’ve applied for a couple of call-out with a new film idea which is semi-lockdown based. The film itself is a vlogger reviewing a film about the power and mystery of imagination. They go into detail when describing certain aspects of the movie such as the dialogue and how the film made them feel. However, they are vague when it comes to actor’s names and the title is never disclosed. We’ve framed it around the thinking that ideas always unfold unhindered in our minds and unlike in film, are only limited by our imagination and even if we’re stuck inside, our ideas can take us all over the world and hopefully beyond. Hopefully someone likes the idea but there’s so many people who will be applying at the moment we’re fairly certain we won’t be chosen. Either way, it’s a fairly easy work to produce and all the hard work has been done, all that’s needed now is to execute it. 

We’ve finally got a progress image of our first matte painting! It looks pretty good and it’ll be very exciting when we eventually receive it. We still haven’t worked on another one yet but we’re definitely going to think more about it this week. 

Something we’ve been thinking more about recently is the sim paintings. These are paintings done by Sims within the game and there's a painting for each 'level' of the Sim's ability. It was a work about how art is percieved within popular culture and more specifically video games. We were thinking about getting them painted all the same small size. Perhaps it’s because of getting the new matte paintings and seeing that it’s fairly easy to do. The only thing would be that because there’s so many of them it would be fairly expensive to produce all of them. Maybe something for another funding proposal… 

The reason there’s been a bit of a slow down in terms of our own practice is that the podcast is taking more and more time. It feels like every week it takes a little bit longer to prepare. Now that we’re doing longer episodes and have an Instagram which we post on every day it is becoming all-encompassing. Not that it’s not enjoyable – it’s great to be able to talk about things we’ve been looking at and even get to talk to some great people. An example being that this week we interviewed Grace Lee from the YouTube channel What’s So Great About That?. She’s someone I’ve following for some time now and I went back and rewatched all her videos which didn’t feel like a burden at all, quite the opposite! Perhaps it would be different if this was our source of income and we did our art on the side but it definitely feels like this potentially isn’t sustainable when life returns to normality. A day of researching, a day of recording and editing, and then writing all the Instagram posts, all while working 5 days a week…We’ll see! If you haven't heard of her then you really should check out her channel, they're beautiful video essays on all kinds of media. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3g8YdblbqlUAKEeAJbzMYw

Finishing some old works and continuing some new ones

Another week of quarantine means another week of making! I’ve made a scale test of the wall based sculpture of an empty plinth and the cast went well once I managed to get the silicone quantity right. I’ve cut out the footprint of Aphrodite of Knidos in thick paper to mask off those areas and ordered some patina-coloured paint that I plan to mix with water and spray over the model in order to give it that aged look. If it turns out to be too difficult we’ll have to reconsider the idea but we can hope! 

I’ve also made another matte painting which is ready to be painted. This one is Clair Noto's film The Tourist. Clair Noto wrote the screenplay and it’s like a darker, sex-charged Men in Black, in a secret alien world in Manhattan, including a secret alien club call the Corridor, where various aliens from all over the universe meet, have sex, and commiserate about being stuck on Earth. We decided to run with the corridor idea and made a new mock-up for a matte painting using a sci-fi style corridor. I feel like we need to do a slightly lighter one – the past two have been quite dark and sci-fi-y so I’m going to try and look more at scenes in greener environments. 

The reprint of the sprue model went really well and the work is finally complete! It’s been a year in the making so it’s great to see it done – also now that all the research and development out of the way the work isn’t too complex or expensive to produce. It’s definitely one of out more visually appealing pieces and will be making the rounds in terms of gifts to parents for birthdays and Christmas. 

Earlier in the week we thought we’d struck gold when trying to think of new examples of the tabletop tactic works. We were struggling to find examples of the scenes we wanted and I thought about all the times when characters in a film plan a heist or explain a plan with objects on a table. A good example is in Bend it like Beckham when the offside rule is explained using mustard and dressing. Quickly we amassed many examples of when the happens in films and TV; The Spanish Apartment (neurosurgeon explains brain using food), Wagons East (wagon master uses kitchen utensils to map of his course), Ni pour, ni contre (bien au contraire) (robbery planned in a restaurant), Max Manus (raid on a harbour planned with cigarette packets), Yes, Minister (political adviser explains downing street’s strategic worth with teacup and ashtray), it even happens in The Simpsons where the kids plan a strategy with the gun shop owner to defeat the bullies with water balloons, has a tabletop map with salt shakers and stones used to represent each faction. However, after thinking about it for some time we realised that we had moved away from the original idea that was all about movements that appear unintentional or natural in a film but are in fact highly planned and meticulous. This is not that and perhaps the research can be used in another piece but for this work it’s back to the drawing board. 

Finally, we’ve started doing some of the outlines of the fictional weapons to get cut out. Hopefully we can see these be made soon enough! Below are the The Noisy Cricket from Men in Black, Harry's Elder wand from Harry Potter, and the Master Sword from The Legend of Zelda.

First post in a year, new works currently in the making

OK so it’s been about a year since we we’ve properly invested time into this. It’s the first time in about 4 years that we’ve taken a break from writing and it was a combination of being swamped in other areas of our life and needing to reflect on why we do it and why it’s important. Even though we haven’t been writing, lots has happened and I so think instead of backtracking we’re just going to discuss what’s happening now (but also reference past events since some of these works have been long in the making). 

One of the new artworks we briefly mentioned a year ago was a Perspex box with Windolene covering the inside, the same dimensions as the stolen artwork Poppy Flowers by Van Gogh. That work has since been finished and so have two others! It looks just how we wanted it to and we’ll definitely be continuing the series. There’s a lovely thing about making artworks that can be given as gifts; really something enjoyable about it.

The sprue commission was also completed! The 3D model looks amazing and we’re now testing out getting it printed. Unfortunately the initial test didn’t go so well, with the model breaking in a couple of areas but we’ve assessed the damage and have redesigned the model so that when it’s printed again it should be much stronger! It’s going to be housed in a similar Perspex frame to the Windolene work and we’re in the process of cutting some foam for it to sit in. The intention is that it mimics some of the features of a collectable – often coins or mint condition toys are kept in such conditions. We were discussing this piece in the last blog post we wrote a year ago, so it’ll be great to finally see it completed. 

Researching custom foam inserts we found that the foam itself has a lovely aesthetic quality. The colours used, combined with the gaps left for objects really make them exciting objects in their own right. The missing objects also plays into invisibility and using one’s imagination to fill a gap (literally in this case) that we’ve intentionally left (a frequent theme of our practice). In terms of display, our idea is to cut the outlines of fictional weapons into the foam inserts and then house them inside a Perspex box like the sprue model. We went back with what we wanted to cut out of the foam – we thought maybe objects that get lost in films (hence they’re missing here) but we felt that weapons make more sense with respect to the foam (since weapons are usually kept in boxes of this nature. The fact that they’re fictional weapons is important because they’re missing and they’re missing because they never existed – they only existed in the reality of the film. In the same way that someone thought them up in the first place – viewers of the work are put into the same position. 

Another piece that evolved from something we were discussing last time about paintings from films. This has developed with research into old styles of matte paintings where people would physically paint backgrounds for specific shots in films. Some famous examples include the original Star Wars trilogy and the Indiana Jones films. This is not the same as a flat backdrop but one step up and is similar to how they create digital environments in cinema today. Our idea is to create matte paintings for films that never got off the ground/were cancelled during production. The first example (below) we’ve got in the making at the moment is one for Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola's film that was planned but got cancelled before production. The title we’ve chosen is Standard Fantasy Setting (Megalopolis Matte). This will eventually be a series with the title staying the same and the name of the film in the brackets changing. What we’re interested in with these matte paintings are that the area of black is completely open to interpretation; until that scene is put together it could be anything that goes into that hole. It’s the potential that’s exciting to us, similar to the area where the weapons are supposed to go in the foam inserts; invisibility creates potential. 

Next up we’ve got a piece which is about how inanimate objects in cinema have the ability to reflect the emotions of the scene they’re in. When people are sat round a table and they’re constantly grabbing their glasses and moving stuff on the table, the scene is quite frantic and most likely so is the conversation. If there is minimal movement in the room the scene is perhaps calmer, more calculated. A table top says a lot about the activity that happens that has happened around it, whether that’s a water ring stain from a glass or a cutting mark from a craft knife – every table-top tells a story. The piece we’ve conceived is that we recreate the table top from a specific scene, whether that’s wood or glass, and we map out the movement of the objects on top of it. The example below is from a clip in Layer Cake where the characters are discussing the next move after a violent incident. The finished work will be on glass to mirror the table from the original scene. We’re going to title the series ‘Tabletop Tactics’ with additional information in brackets, like the matte paintings. Perhaps a quote from the scene rather than the title of the film because it’s more about the scene as a standalone thing rather that the whole film. 

Finally, we’ve got another wall based sculpture on the go which is a plinth with a missing statue. This is only in the very beginning stages and will most likely take a long time but the idea came from a variety of interests; the first being the stolen Barbara Hepworth sculpture in Dulwich Park and the second seeing this plinth which has clear had a sculpture on it for white some time and then it’s been removed. It’s again about the invisibility bringing potential; not being able to achieve closure on something is what makes your mind think is more than just the single, obvious solution. We’re thinking about relating this to our other work about stolen paintings and having names after missing/stolen sculptures. The empty footprint/space will relate to the shape the missing sculpture would have taken up. We’ve just started making scale tests from jesmonite so we’ll see how that goes and if we can stomach making a big one. We’re going to title the series ‘Building from a smudge (Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles)’ the brackets again referring to the missing sculpture and the idea of building from a smudge I what the viewer will be doing; reimagining the sculpture from only a smudge. 

We’ve also got the Artists and Friends podcast back up and running which is fun! Give it a listen if you’re in need of some quarantine recommendations.

3 D p r i n t i n g i s c o o l

Got a test done to see how the 3D printed origami unicorn would turn out and it looks great! Definitely going to proceed with the work, perhaps do a couple more tests to see what sizes would be best.