Leisure...

This is my work for the 'Jump The Shark' exhibition at Camberwell Leisure Centre (20th-28th of June 09).

In case yer wondering... This was my thought process:
Leisure → Sport → Competive element → Wierdest competitions/contests...

And from a list of obscure and pretty bizarre contests such Cheese-rolling, Moustache-growing, Knobbly knees and Flaming Tar-Barrel Carrying (unsure of the official name for that one!)
I chose to focus on 'The Egremont Crab Fair' in Cumbria, also known as the World Gurning Championships. I knew this would give me interesting subject matter for making art.

I was originally gonna look for a gurning association of some description in London but after hours of trawling google this started to look improbable... So I decided to work in clay and base my work only loosely on real gurners, using my imagination to fill in the blanks.

Here is the final piece in its the exhibition space.


Close ups of the individual models:

Ceasar Flavius Valerius etc etc blah blah

Ceasar Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus... Emperor Constantine I... Constantine the Great... or simply Flavius Flav as his bezzie mates call him.



Istanbuuuuuuul!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TRIAD

Here is a load o stuff from the last end of t' Author Project.
This work is a collab. With Jimmy Patrick, Phillipe Fenner & Callum McClean, whose blogs you can find in my links.
Our Animation, which was part stop-motion, part real-time video. It shows how the social groups within our society communicate with each other (or to be more precise how information is passed between groups, and also how Olof entices members of society to do evil by hypnosis-induced dance...)



We got started on in the street by schoolboys, they called us 'neeks' and questioned our taste in attire. We wuz quakin' in our collective boots.

Here is our manifesto book (based on the triangular prototype Jimmy knocked together).
The reason it works so well is because we established an alphabet and certain terms which we used within the narrative. We all worked on lino, all printed with black ink and all used triangular format. We will eventually be doing another (more consistant) pressing of these (using an actual press instead of standing on the upturned plates to print!) which we will sell to any takers.

These're the three plates I made for the book, in sequence.

1 - Character title page.
An army of Olof drummer machines. The accdompanying title reads "Resist evil temptations."

2 - Illustrations related to my character.
The title of this plate is "The law", it shows the crimes within the Triad society...
It's basically like the 10 commandments, except it's pictorial and there's only 6.
(L-R from top)

• Sword - Thou shalt not murder.
• Thought bubble - Thou shalt not blaspheme or take Elcass name in vain.
• Olof's '35' Symbol - Thou shalt not play, listen or dance to the "#35" rhythm (more about this later...
• Balaclava - Thou shalt not steal from one another.
• Characters - Thou shalt not socialise outside of your species/social group.
• Cards - Thou shalt not gamble.

Violators of the law will be punished by Elcass with remoulding into Olof form.
The lawbreaker will be then forced to walk the deserts of Baldsand and Rebnar eternally.

3 - Character Story.
This plate tells the story behind the character Olof.
The text reads as follows... bits in red aren't in the actually story but help to explain it.

"From the wreckage of the 'Great Fire' (Nuclear World War) Olof was formed to entertain. As Olof became more and more advanced, so did his drum patterns.
The 35th rhythm had a sinister effect on Elcass' (god and dictator of Triad) mind and Olof was banished to the barren desert. There he would wander eternally, using his evil beat to tempt mankind (of sorts) towards darkness though hypnosis induced dance.
To remind the Third Coming (Triad society) of Olof's evil way, sinners and convicts (see plate 2) would be cast into the form of Olof and grouped together to distract each other from bothering mankind.
Olof saw this as a chance to rally troops (see plate 1) and take revenge on the Third Coming."

The final part of the project required me to make a map of the Triad Province, and a monument.
I originally made the map using different coloured card, and pen. Here it is for all to see.
I tried to make it amusing for anyone that can decipher the alphabet.. some of the place names include: the Aiybeah Sea (A.B.)... Apisinda Ocean (A piss in the)... Baldsand (anagram of Badlands, though not on this version) and Nottingham Forest!

I was pretty unhappy with that as it looks shit. The text was all over the place it generally lost all the authority that comes with being a map.
Using the photo above that I took of the map on the wall, I "digitally remastered" the original. To do this I had to edit out all the text on the original, block all the colours so there was a consistant tone throughout (without the dog-eared corners and fold marks!)
I then knocked together a Truetype Font of the Triad alphabet, added the (now uniform) text back in, and added graph lines over the blank map layer.

Here's the much more polished final version using the font and graph lines. You can also see how I edited the palette down into simple block colour.

And this is the Monument to Elcass. It seems fitting that this monument was made up of pyramids, as in the early stages of the project we were looking at Egyptian gods and heiroglyphics, even if the Egyptians built square-based pyramids rather than triangular-based. The monument isn't to any kind of scale, but it is located at the very top of the map, in the white triangle on Mt. Elcass.