New Work In Progress

Following on from my recent sculpture, Planetoid 210, I've decided to continue with the spherical theme and have started a new piece that will hopefully end up looking (if all goes well) like the love child of two of my other sculptures, The City and Cardboard Brain. Like Cardboard Brain, the new piece is going to be constructed primarily of interwoven periscopes and as with The City, I plan to use windows of magnified glass that will allow the viewer to peer into miniature environments, slotted in between the voids amongst the periscopes.
I say all this now but until the work starts to properly take shape its hard to tell how much space there will be for the miniature environments or if the overall shape will even be remotely spherical. These sculptures sometimes have a will of their own and refuse to conform – or is that just me anthropomorphising again?

 As you can see from this work in progress, it's early days yet. I've still not constructed enough periscopes to make the framework for even half of the sphere. I have a feeling that it's going to get trickier and trickier trying trying to fit all the internal sections together as the piece starts to take form but luckily I love that sort of thing.

This was the sketch that I made when I came up with the initial idea for the work. Admittedly it's not the most considered drawing in the world but I do have a habit of quickly forgetting ideas for artworks unless I jot something down on paper as soon as I think of it. So a lot of my drawings are little more than a few quick squiggles, but enough to act as a mental prompt.

Planetoid 210

For a few years now I've been toying with the idea of using soil in some of my sculptures. This is my first foray into that particular area - I had to resist the urge to say 'field'. I'm not sure how I feel about this new piece (maybe it'll work as part of a larger group of similar sculptures) but that's okay because it was my first attempt at working with soil and I just wanted to see what would happen. 

 

I'm actually pleased with the physical results, as the soil mixture has set hard and doesn't show any signs of flaking. As you can see from the work in progress shot below, I built a plywood armature first. Then I covered it in a soil, wood chip and glue mixture.

'Planetoid 210' is a realisation of one of a series of sketches that I've been working on for some time. These sketches all involve architectural structures or towers sitting atop planetoids or spherical bodies that are obviously too small to realistically support them. The original drawing was inspired by something that happened to me whilst I was in Goa, India. I was swimming in the sea and noticed an interesting seed pod floating towards me. And as I picked it up to investigate further a small colony of tiny crabs decided that they must have hit dry land and proceeded to disembark onto my hand. I don't think that I'll ever forget those curious little seafarers and I often wonder how far and long they must have been travelling in that manner.

Nail Heart

It's been a few weeks now since I last posted anything on my blog (partly due to excesses of the festive season and partly due to with me having to deal with an unusually large accumulation of boringly non-arty grown-up things – oh, if only I could just spend the rest of my life in a big, purely creative bubble) so I thought it about time that put up something new.

I've recently been tinkering with a few new sculptures - this being the smallest, which I made as a present for the photographer Rosie Mayell (who kindly photographed it for me). I'll post some pics of the others at a later date. As you can see, the piece is a wooden heart and much like my Nail Box sculpture, it's pierced with rusty nails and the odd screw here and there. Both pieces are heavily influenced by the minkisi carvings of the Congo.

Being a big fan of the immediacy of power tools, I carved the body of the Nail Heart on a band-saw which greatly sped up the carving process. The band-saw proved surprisingly versatile as a carving tool, if not a little scary – luckily I managed to finish the job with the same amount of fingers with which I started.

Before I added all the nails I let a few friends handle the lightly sanded and waxed wooden heart as it had a very tactile quality. And more than one person put this down to the fact that part of it looked and felt like a bottom. What can I say - maybe something subconscious filtered through during the production stage.

Planetoid Designs

I’ve been spending a lot of time in my studio lately, working on my new Orifice Tower sculpture – which is coming along nicely (although I’m probably being a bit over indulgent with the fine details). However, in between waiting for the glue to set on some of the joints and inner box structures, I’ve been working on a few sketches for a potential new body of work and experimenting with a new material. The material in question is soil (well, it’s new to me as an art material). The designs are based upon an idea I had a few years ago – and are a follow on from the sketch that I made at the time.

The designs all feature buildings or building-like structures perched upon spherical planetoid-like masses that are far too small to properly support them. This tiny drawing shows a small cluster of towers.
The challenge with using soil as an art material is to find a way of stabilising it but fortunately my first experimental mixture of soil, glue and other materials seems to have worked even better than I’d expected - so I’m raring to go with the first piece.

Saatchi Gallery Showdown 5

I’ve just checked my page on the Saatchi Online site to see how my Nail Box sculpture is doing in the new Showdown competition and was surprised to find that it’s current standing is listed as 32 out of 2900 entries. This seems pretty good as it’s normally the paintings that get all the votes. But it’s early days yet and I won’t be shocked if it doesn’t make it into the top 300 entries and therefore advance to the jury voting stage.
Also, I suspect that Nail Box is a bit vain and only wanted to enter the competition so that lots of people would get to see it.

Addicted to Drawing

I’m not wishing to knock it but I seem to be addicted to drawing at the moment – maybe it's my way of distracting myself from thinking about other stuff. I’ve just uploaded a few recent drawings to my sketchbook page. Most of them relate to, or are ideas for, the new Orifice Box sculpture project that I’m working on. But they are not the drawings that I mentioned in my previous post. Those ones will appear soon, on my quick-fire drawings page – just as soon as I get round to uploading them.

Orifice Boxes - New Work

I’ve just started working on a new series of sculptures that I’m hoping will be ready in time for a group show that I and fellow RBS sculptor, Alice Cunningham, are looking to organise later this year in Shoreditch, London. The exhibition is to be an all sculpture event; however, I think it might be nice to have some examples of working drawings on display too. Although it’s early days yet and we haven’t decided on how many artists to include in the show, I have already invited a very talented artist, Gary Martin, who has accepted.
Anyway - back to my new series of sculptures. Basically, I was itching to make something so I started trawling through my pile of old sketchbooks looking for any unrealised projects that I could bring to life, when I came across the above sketch. It is a drawing that I made a few years ago that was inspired by my earlier wall-mounted Orifice sculpture but which was describing an idea for a box sculpture on wheels (no surprise there then). The initial idea was for the box to be cobbled together from a mixture of different bits of wood and odds and ends in a Frankenstein’s monster kinda way. From the photos above, you can see the early stages of the new piece (from the orifice carved from a block of wood, to the completed front panel). As is often the case, it was the production of the work that triggered ideas for spin-off pieces or pieces that would work as a series. In this family group each of the sculptures, while being of varying sizes and dimensions, will have a carved orifice or portal and have something at its centre. This first one is to have a nail-encrusted inner box, not too dissimilar to my previous piece, Nail Box.

City Stills

I recently re-discovered some black and white photos that I took of my City sculpture, not long after I had first completed it. My initial idea for the City was for it to be a set for a small 8mm animated film (but it somehow turned itself inside out and became a tower sculpture instead) so these photos were a sort of tribute to the unborn film – ‘stills from a film that doesn’t exist’, if you like.
Having grown up on a diet of strange little dark animations and movies, I think that my sculptural influences probably owe more to cinematography than they do to offer fields of art. As I’m sure many of you can tell, I was always a big fan of people like the Brothers Quay and of Czech animators such as Jan Švankmajer - and the weird dreamlike worlds that they conjured up probably had a lot to do with the way my delicate little mind developed during those formative years.

My Last RBS Workshop

Here are some photos from last Tuesday’s school workshop at the Royal British Society of Sculptors It was the largest class that I’ve worked with so far at the RBS so we divided the children up into two groups. While one group did sketches of the sculptures (that myself and the other artists are currently exhibiting in the Found show), the rest made small sculptures out of found objects and household materials. Then the two groups swapped over. I also got to give a small talk to the kids about my work. And once again, the children didn't cease to amaze me with the wonderful things they managed to produce in such a short space of time. Well done kids!

Whaleless in Berlin

To give you a little taste of the sort of artwork that will be featuring in the up-coming KETOS 2.1 show at the Civic Aquarium in Milan here is a video clip of an earlier Whaleless show, from when it travelled to Strychnin's Berlin gallery. My sculpture is the wall mounted piece in the glass fronted coffin that appears early on in the video. Although now the number of contributing artist has grown so I imagine that the latest version of the exhibition will be a lot bigger.

Whaleless in Milan

My Poorly Remembered Whale sculpture is continuing on its tour of Europe and will be shown in the upcoming Ketos 2.1 show as the Whaleless exhibition opens at its latest venue, the Civic Aquarium in Milan, Italy. The show opens on the 14th April, the same day as Milan Design Week, and closes on the 16th May. This will be the largest Whaleless show so far, with over 60 contributing artists.

Click here to see the wide range of artwork being shown, and to find links to more work by each of the exhibiting
Whaleless artists.

If your Italian is up to much, you can check out details of the event on the
Milan Civic Aquarium’s website (and maybe you can tell me what it says)

Whaleless Facebook Group

RBS Workshops

This week I’ve had loads of fun taking part in a couple of the schools workshops that the Royal British Society of Sculptors have been running in conjunction with their Found exhibition, currently showing at their Brompton Road gallery in South Kensington, London. As one of the exhibiting artists I was invited to come along and talk to the kids about my work and help out with the workshops. Although the sessions were each only about an hour long it was incredible what they managed to achieve. I never cease to be amazed by the creativity and sheer weirdness of children’s imaginations.

I got great photos of some of the kids and their amazing creations (which were even more amazing considering the time limits that they had to work under). However, because of the current climate and concerns over images of children appearing on the internet (unless everyone was just in the Witness Protection Program) I unfortunately had to drastically crop or omit some of the best images.

Anyway – this evening, from 6:30 onwards, I (along with two other sculptors, Susan Forsyth and Linda Johns) will be giving short talks about our work at the gallery and everyone is welcome to come along. But don’t worry, each talk will only be 15 minutes long so there will be plenty of time mingle and knock to back a few glasses of wine.

Hairy Wednesday

Fetish, originally uploaded by Wayne Chisnall.

Just a quick reminder that you can get to see my Fetish sculpture (the one made out of human hair) this coming Wednesday at the opening of the Royal British Society of Sculptors’ new exhibition, Found, at their Gallery in South Kensington, London. And on Wednesday the 24th March I’ll be giving a short talk about my work with found materials. To find out the full details click on the e-flier below.

Free Art

Swirl Skull Print RCA 2009, originally uploaded by Wayne Chisnall.

I've finally managed to catch up on all the sleep that I missed from working through the night, last night, to get all the Swirly Skull mini screen prints done in time so that I could hand them out free to all those dedicated art lovers queueing up for this years RCA Secret sale at The Royal College of Art, London (damn, that was a long sentence). I plan to do a very limited edition, larger version of the Swirly Skull at some point in the future, as well as a limited run featuring a block of 9 skulls (each skull being the same size as the ones I gave out today) but I'll keep you posted on that - I need to find a new studio first.
Last year I handed out stickers to so this year I thought I'd do something special and I created 400, signed and editioned, postcard-sized screen prints - just for the RCA Secret punters.
It had been a long time since I last hand printed a set of screen prints myself and I had forgotten how much fun it was. I must also say a big thank you to screen printer and clothes designer, Chris Hall (check out his new range of street wear at the Sunday 'Up Market', off Brick Lane, London) for preparing the screen for me, for all his technical advise and for use of his screen printing equipment. Much appreciated.
Sorry to all those in the crowd that I wasn't able to get to. Unfortunately I arrived a few minutes too late to reach people at the very front of the queue, as the doors had just opened and everyone was understandably eager to get inside.
As usual at the RCA Secret event, everyone was feeling excited and chatty - and it was great to see a few familiar faces from last year. Because I got there a little late I missed out on catching up with some of the regulars camped out at the front but it would be good to catch up with some of you and find out how you did.

The Brain Unravelled – Set Up

The Brain Unravelled – Set Up, originally uploaded by waynechisnall.

Well, I’ve just finished setting up my work for tomorrow evening’s The Brain Unravelled opening party. This is the first time that I’ve actually seen what my assembled sculpture looks like – I had just been making it in sections and hoping for the best once it came to the assembly stage. The fun (and also annoying) thing about this piece is that it can be put together in an infinite number of configurations. The form that it eventually took for this show is a careful compromise between aesthetics, stability and what can be seen through the periscope viewers. However, the views through the piece should be more interesting once the space fills up with gallery goers – it’s hard not to smile when you peer into a little window and see a face peering back at you.
In the background of the photo above, you can see part of an installation by the Storm Thorgerson – the guy behind all those iconic Pink Floyd album covers.
I was hoping to see what work Anthony Gormley had submitted for the show but it had not been set up before I left so I’ll just have to wait till tomorrow evening.
If anybody would still like to come to the opening party please email your name to info@thebrainunravelled.com by 3 pm Monday 7th September to be included on the guest list.

A World Of Imaginary Whales

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it back to Italy to see my Poorly Remembered Whale sculpture at the KETOS 2.0 (A World Of Imaginary Whales) exhibition in Reggio Emilia’s Civic Museum. But I have managed to find some beautifully atmospheric photos of the show on the Strychnin Gallery’s Facebook page –


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033008&id=1245480815&l=1092188393

By all accounts the show was very well received and although the work has already been touring Europe as part of the Whaleless show I think that this new venue has given the work an altogether more haunting quality. So congratulations to everyone involved in the hang – you’ve done a fantastic job.

Corruption Incarnate (work in progress)

Corruption Incarnate (work in progress), originally uploaded by Wayne Chisnall.

In preparation for tomorrow’s ‘Writing On The Wall’ at the South Bank I’ve been working on the framework for my piece – working title, ‘Corruption Incarnate’. As the theme for this event (organised by Ctrl+Alt+Shift) is Corruption, I’ve decided to have a bit of fun and on the day I will be creating a very over the top, camp-gothic creature – complete with dripping talons and a black cloak. To emphasize the corruption element the creature will be made out of dollar bills, have a gold snout that appears to be dripping black oil and have an exaggerated Nosferatu-like body.
The logistics of creating the framework for the sculpture have made this an interesting project to work on. And in some ways it will be a shame when I have to eventually cover the figure in its cloak, and hide the supporting armature. But that’s me I suppose – more interested in the process and the underlying structure than the end product.

To find out more about this event, check out –
http://www.ctrlaltshift.co.uk/#/Magazine/article/917

Arty Business

LBS_Crossroads Art Exhibition set-up, originally uploaded by Wayne Chisnall.

I'd like to thank Julie Dagonet and the rest of the fantastic Crossroads Art Exhibition team at the London Business School for inviting me to be guest artist in their upcoming show. Above is a photo showing the setting up of the exhibition. It was refreshing to be involved in an installation where everything went smoothly – no tears and tantrums with this group. As far as I can remember this is the first time that I’ve had my work exhibited in a big office environment, and it works surprisingly well. There is a strangely surreal play between the everyday nature of the room and the work (looking like it has found itself somewhere that it shouldn’t be) – I love it.
The rest of the works on display are by members of the school community. Namely - Rikkya Oker, Dennis Valdez, Carl Clough, Kevin Talbot, Marie-Helene Dagonet, Shalini Chanda, Ninad Shinde, Denise Donoghue, Kyueun Han, Remi Savoya, Nina Kelemen, Caroline Bray, Juan Diego Sorbet Esnoz, Lok Ming Fung, Ming Gao, Yvonne, Svetlana Aslezova, Thibaud Simphal, and Erik Wilterding.
And considering that many of these people might not claim art to be their primary passion, there is some very accomplished work on show.
So Tuesday evening’s opening night looks to be quite exciting. Not only do we have Dean Andrew Likierman’s inauguration at 5:30 pm and the opening of the show in the Fairbairn Room at 5:45, there’ll be a concert in the Upper Quad at 6:16 pm, performed by students from the Royal Academy of Music. The performers are Midori Komachi on Violin, Helene Koerver on Viola and Alena Lugovkina on Flute. And the following day, May 27, we have LauYee Yeung on the Harp.

'Affluenza' - Underground Exhibition

Affluenza Venue, originally uploaded by Wayne Chisnall.

Here's a photo of the room in which I will be exhibiting my sculpture, 'Magnet', at next weeks 'Affluenza' show. I popped in last week to have a mooch around. The venue is amazing - it's all underground and covers 20,000 sq ft. For any of you out there who are into 'urban exploring' (you know who you are), here's a good opportunity to have a wander round a very interesting building, with lots of spooky passage ways, without the worry of being chased off by security guards.
So if you'd like to come along to the opening night party on Thursday 19th of this month (6-10 pm), the venue is 187-211 St. John's Street, Clerkenwell, London EC1 - you could even check out the artwork while you're there.

Any Old Iron... Any Old Iron

Mobile Citadel Sketch, originally uploaded by Wayne Chisnall.

I'm on the scrounge again. This time I'm looking for any old sheets of metal to make my new sculpture with. The more battered and corroded the better, but preferably not too thick - maybe 1-2 mm. Above you can see a quick sketch that I did which should give a rough idea of how the final piece might look.
The piece is for a new, 'A Gothic Story 2' (a follow up to the 'A Gothic Story' exhibition that I had work in last year), which will be held at Coal House Fort, a historic fortification on the Thames Estuary in East Tilbury, Essex, England. The exhibition will last for 3 months somewhere between May and September. It looks like it will also coincide with a Shakespeare company production of 'As you Like It', due to take place somewhere within the grounds.
I checked out Coal House Fort on the internet and found out that it is often used for film sets. In fact, the Chinese prison scenes in 'Batman Begins' were filmed there. Being a batman fan myself - this has got to be a good omen.