Day 38 - Specialism Sculpture and British Museum

January 16, 2022

British Museum Courtyard

The second option I chose as a specialisms after Vis Com was Sculpture and for the first part of our initial day we checked out some of the Sculpture at London's British Museum this gave context and a chance to see how some of the practical obstacles have been handled in the past.

Ute the teacher gave us some tasks which included looking at Egyptian, African and Greek work and to make some drawings too.

Egyptian

Ute had suggested we consider how this would look if the dark and light were inverted

A lot of the original remains

Ute also mentioned a nearby public work 'Chain of events' (1996) by Peter Randall- Page

In the afternoon Ute introduced us to some of the projects we can work on - and we thought about some of the points that we might consider with public works we were looking at.

We also saw some tools and materials for carving - we will approach some Clay with woodworking style and were able to take some clay away to experiment with.

Here are some sketches and comments - first Greek.

The Greek works looked as classic sculptures but for me the fact that they were once smooth and undamaged and coloured means that I'm looking at a 'conceit' that has become an accepted view of sculpture is troublesome - in Denmark I've seen sculpture coloured as it might have been when it was 'new' and I'd like to see more of this.

I was also interested by the way the friezes were not designed for 360 degree viewing.

The Egyptian heads seemed to me to be about power and not really representing a particular pharaoh (in fact it seems that it was common practice for successive Pharaohs to take 'ownership' earlier works as being of them.

What interested me about the African work which was a serpentine figure, 'Strong Man (2015) by Tinei Mashaya A Zimbabwean Shona Sculptor- seeing this reminded me of some of the things I'd gleaned from looking at Yinka Shonibare - namely African art takes and gives from other regions and there's not a single 'African art' - this in fact reminded me of Eric Gill's work and I liked how minimal lines were strongly representational.