Past Work - Thirty Works 2020 - First 10
Each morning I'm given a brief. Following it is optional, but I enjoy the process of trying to find a way of responding to it.
Here's the briefs and my responses for the first 10 days:
Day 1: Is there a work you're scared to make? Make it anyway!
Title: Scared? Me?
My response was this short video: https://youtu.be/Uttizsp3NOA
It's an automaton made from a walnut and clothes peg. Opening the peg causes the mouth to open and the eyes to roll back in their sockets.
Day 2: Can you make a home at home?
Title: Home in a Hollow
Playing with scale. This is a hollow ash tree in our garden. The "ladder" is about 450mm high. Beryl took a photo of me in a chair which I placed in the hollow using Photoshop.
Day 3: What do you need to make your work?
Title: Thought
I always start projects with an idea so I took an image of part of Rodin's Thinker and gave it a look somewhat akin to Andy Warhol's Marilyn diptych. Required me to re-learn some Photoshop skills!
Day 4: Try cheating today
Title: Something to hide?
Short video of me looking as though I'm up to no good
Day 5: What does a failure look like to you?
Title: Alan Kurdi, 3, drowned
I started out thinking of my own failures and then realized I should be focusing on REAL failures, such as allowing the disaster in Syria to result in the drowning of a toddler. I'm not very happy with this drawing but in some ways it reinforces the point that there's more important issues to focus on.
Day 6: Take an old work and make it more commercial
Title: How to fake Damien Hirst's signature
I'm not really interested in making my work more commercial so I thought it would be funny to fake a famous artist's signature on one of my creations. Then I discovered this, by Emmanuel Laflamme, and he gave me permission to reproduce it.
Day 7: Are you a hare or a tortoise?
Title: A Hairy Ride for a Tortoise
I wanted to depict a hare-like mind with occasional tortoise like progress - some of my projects take years to complete. My initial thought was to adapt a rat-in-a-treadmill design I've been working on. Then I hit on photographing my car dashboard and just changing the position of the needles using Photoshop. In retrospect, I doubt whether many people will notice the needle positions.
Day 8: Does your work have a legacy?
Title: Water
It comes from my "Teapotty" collection, where I ran the video in reverse so the teapot emerges from a puddle of water. I thought it was particularly apt because the teapot disappears, raising a question over whether it has a legacy and if so, whether it's this video, the puddle of water or something else.
Day 9: Is there a bit of art-related admin you'd been putting off? (of course there is); maybe do that today?
Title: Inspiration in Short Supply
To my mind, the briefs to date have been disappointing - they don't get my mojo going - and this one took the biscuit. So I submitted this as a response.
Day 10: Make a list of things that you can remember wanting to make but never got round to doing.
Can you make any today?
Title: You're doin' my head in
See video:https://youtu.be/RyPIc0ccjKY
I didn't bother making a list but I've had a fun day making another automaton, possibly sending another message about the briefs.