I researched into the history of ‘Swan Vesta’, and found that the origins of the company produced the first striking matches in Britain.
I realised that the two traditional colours of ‘Swan Vesta’ where originally red and yellow……..
This was easily rectified, but I decided it might be more effective to keep the green as a stripe around the back of the swan, I felt this would have a strong nostalgic feel to it, but also made more contemporary, and giving it a strong influence of ‘Pop Art’.
This is the next stage I took once I had finished the background. I decided that instead of having spaces in-between each filter, which did give it a more feathered and realistic look.
I decided that I wanted it to look more solid and condensed.
This I felt would give the work a stronger, and more synthetic feel.
So I started gluing each filter tip to the canvas. Once I had finished the neck of the swan, I new that this, although a tedious process, was the look I wanted.
Here you can see more of an idea of what it was I wanted.
One interesting comment I had from one of my lecturer’s, was that it reminded them of the works of Sarah Lucas.
Particularly her ‘Cigarette’ works, whereby she used cigarettes straight from the pack to build interesting shapes and sculptures.
Because of my use of the filter tips, which are related to smoking products, I found this extremely inspiring.
Over the last few years, ‘Swan’ has released several different limited edition packets. These designs with strong aspects of British ‘Pop Art’ were a major influence on my practise.
So I used an A2 piece of canvas board, I sketched the outline of the swan and then began to paint the background.
The background I split into two colours (Yellow & Green), which I felt were the most prominent colours from the packaging.
The face and beak of the swan, I sketched onto a 6mm thick piece of foam board. This image I then cut out, painted red and black, which was then ready to fix to the canvas.
To get an idea of possible layering of the filter tips, I played about with how I might want it to look.
Swan Vesta Project.
When thinking about the different directions I could go, from my concept of consumer culture and media. I wanted to work with a piece of packaging that most would recognise upon viewing. The packaging of Swan filter tips struck me as a great advertisement to work with.
My thought process from this point, was to make my own advertisement of the original product. To subvert it and make it into my own interpretation, I wanted to not only use the packaging, but to use the actually product (filter tips) themselves.
