Although much of the new work I created for MYTHOMANIA was fabric-based (as described in my previous posts) I also created one of my more familiar large-scale sculptures for the exhibition. The curators had asked me to create a big piece that could be placed in (or near) the café area of the gallery – and so I did some research into large sculptural figures from history that might provide some inspiration. After looking around a bit I stumbled upon images of protective statues that guard Thai temples; I loved the colours and detail – and I especially liked their squatting poses, which make the sculptures appear bigger than they actually are. I then used Photoshop to place one of the statues in the gallery’s café – to serve as a kind of guide when creating my own artwork:
I wanted the sculpture to similarly be a “protective” kind of figure – inspired by famous heroes from across history (including contemporary comics and sci fi). I wanted to reference everything from Hercules to Transformers and Iron Man.
For some reason I was also interested in the pose of Louis XIV (the so-called ‘Sun King’) and wanted to find a way to reference this in some way. I did a bit more research into the period’s colours and styles, and found other interesting designs associated with the ‘Sun King’:
I then produced a sketch that retained the original temple figure’s pose, but incorporated some of the other elements:
Once all of this was done, I began to realize that the figure I was creating wasn’t so much a ‘hero’ as such – but something more ambivalent related to the role of protector or leader. I’ve always been interested in the way many ancient heroes (including ones such as Hercules, Gilgamesh, and Troy) and modern ones (like Batman, Wolverine, etc.) are often as destructive and bloodthirsty as the villains they fight. This can extend to world leaders such as Donald Trump – who, as President of the United States, should be a ‘protector’ figure – but, like Louis XIV seems more focused on retaining power, boasting about his importance, and flaunting his personal income. So by the time I’d refined the sculpture, it was more of an incarnation of power, strength and wealth than anything else. Rather than calling it “Hero” (the original title) I titled it “Sun King”.
As usual, I began my making a maquette version of the sculpture. This helped me identify any problem areas so I could modify the design accordingly:
I didn’t have time to finish the maquette…but I built enough to know where the problem areas were – then I fixed the designs accordingly. After that I added the surface designs so it looked more like this:
Then I sent it off to get printed onto corrugated cardboard. A couple of weeks later I received the sheets of card, then sliced them up with a scalpel and folded them up – then assembled everything into the final sculpture:
