CPS Week 3 Found objects

By Holland Kerr

WEEK 3 

FOUND OBJECTS 

In response to the theme of "Found Objects", I wasn't sure where to start. I found some context in the form of Silly Billy Tasmanian junkyard sculptures and wanted to turn that context onto my large water bottle, which research told me says a lot about women's gym culture and cheap products. 

But if I wanted to work from Billy's influence, I would need something disposable that I could sculpt with. So I took out crafting scraps (from a recent ASMR video made for APD) and started to cut them up and play with their shapes. I couldn't settle on one particular sculpture I wanted to make and instead felt the need to use them in a flat illustrative way, as is reflective for me, and less as traditional sculpture. 

I made about 10 scrap-doodles and examined my photos, deciding the squared off shapes and rounded lines from the cut up pool-noodles I was using actually closely resembled the illustration style of Genndy Tartakovsty, the concept artist for Samurai Jack. I decided to turn some of my characters into Tartakovsky style illustrations. 

By using pool noodles and other scrap, I demonstrated to myself how much object/medium can inform form. In retrospect I realise how much Tartakovsky’s technique is a natural and intentional descendant of 1950s cut out illustrations, Saul Bass for example, and how I was unthinkingly recreating that origin in some way. 

My final work is based on Tartakovsky’s illustration style, and a Moodboard of his work is included below.