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:

CAPSULE CABARET #3

the performance of

Palomar in Society - On Biting the Tongue.

Basically it reads from top to bottom:

Palomar in society

On biting the tongue

"Any edible tongue will be mashed into a pulp by the teeth"

Part of capsule cabaret afternoon

Animation & Performance

from 2:15

(That's when ours was, I wasn't quite sure when it officially kicked off at the time of making this poster)

in the BA Illustration studio.

Basically just a lot of collected imagery, a warped photocopy, stencilled text, some edited text (that originally said: "Anything edible will be mashed into a pulp by the teeth, jaw and tongue")

I am quite comfortable working in punk style cut-n-paste, so this was pretty easy to piece together really. I think using warped photocopies as a background works quite well for black and white, as it has a textural material-like quality to it.

I also made this beast.

Mr. Palomar now resides in my kitchen/lounge in Halls.
His grey skin tone represents the greyness of his character. Always "umming and ahhing"
His eyes move in unison (not of their own accord) and his maxilla and mandible (thanks, Hunterian) are seperate so his mouth opens and he had a big foam tongue but it was rather rank so i didn't bring it home.

Originally, he was supposed to have an empty white box showing his mind and thoughts through projection. In the end he was a kind of minor part as most of the focus was on the animation, which was on a white curtain. I was behind the curtain operating the eyes, jaw and tongue.

It was a little bit shambolic on my part because I couldn't see what was going on and hadn't chance to rehearse as such! I enjoyed it though, it was a larf.