Group Experimentations.

In class we were given the task of working in groups of 3 and completing these tasks by using the method of collage in 3 different ways explained on the sheet below and only having 20 minutes to complete each.

As a warm up before we started we were given the task of choosing a random photograph (there was one in each persons place that we could take a pick from) and to rip it up and drop it, sticking it down in the places the pieces landed in. My photograph was a 19th century portrait of a women looking rather puzzled, I could link the ripping to the idea of her thoughts scattering around, the result was very random, didn't compositionally make sense at all. Tone was very important, browns of various shades from the background took over because there was more of this negative space than the actual women and her clothing. Materials were limited here and I was timed with 5 minutes so there was lots of room for improvement.

Group Task 1: Torn Collage

We were given an A1 sheet of white card and using various photocopies of photographs given to us by our teacher (birds, plants, flowers, sea shells, information, fashion, abstract and surreal animal and human combinations being the main ones), we had to rip/tear/cut ect. these and combine any materials we could find to use with them and create a collage. We used pretty much all of the subject matter in the photocopies and started of with this, we also found tracing paper, coloured card and newsprint to add to this to vary our mediums. For finishing touches we used charcoal, pen, pencil and scribbled and smudged in random negative spaces. We finished it off by squirting blue and green paint on our result and dripping yellow over it. 

Although we involved a lot of mediums and patterns in our work, we thought more about avoiding negative space and using literally whatever we could find rather than focusing on an actual composition which gave us an expected random and unclear result, I liked the texture because of the way some bits were folded and some bits weren't stuck down properly ect.

Task 2: Cubomania

On A4 pieces of coloured card we were given the task to cut up the same subject matter of photocopied things into squares or random shapes and create something abstract with them. We started by cutting up fish and also a mans physique, we didn't go as crazy with the subject matter this time because we found that the man's body parts combined with the fish's body parts could make an abstract and humorous piece. We used a fishes head in replacement of a human one and fish tail instead of legs, this time round we put more thought into the subject matter and also the colour - the orange card worked well as a background because of the brown and orange tones in the fish and the fish in colour with the man in black and white made a clear distinction, the use of just squares rather than random shapes kept this quite simple but clear so it was effective.

We had time to produce another piece on this task, this time we decided we would each cut out a random shape - squares, circles and triangle this time, we used animal bodies and animal fashion photographs to create a composed piece of animals heads/antlers/legs ect. being replaced by a different animals ones and made this into a circle. The green card let the shapes stand out because it was dark and sat in the background well. 

Task 3: Exquisite Corpse

Here we thought of a human body and divided it into four sections from top to bottom - head, body, waist and legs. We all started by creating a head out of the random photocopied subject matter and the idea was that we would pass our result to the person next to us and have them create the next body part with something random and abstract.

We started by thinking outside of the box and aimed to create abnormal heads and involve more into each body part. Here I created the bottom part and thought that 2 different types of animals legs would look weird and strange but also fit well with the composition, abstract where the fish tail ended because I started the left leg again. I felt the fish tail part slightly ruined this composition, I would rather something more think involved to balance it out more.

I created the head here, I placed a smaller head on a large one and involved a third person by perching them on the shoulder. I like the use of the flowers as legs here because of how their appearance has been changed by them being turned upside down.

I created the two heads here prior to the three heads above. The result to me looked like they were quite trapped because of the wrapped up look of the middle two parts, the feet look like there should have been more of them (slightly cut off) the middle could represent hiding their bodies.

Here the head was morphed into two other heads, I created the tree as the third part of the body and the bottom where I cut out a persons feel from side view and instead used the sillouette, we enhanced it by drawing leaves on the trees which worked well, although I didn't like the random scribbles on the side, I felt the pice would have worked better without them.

My favourite task here was exquisite corpse because of how humour could be involved but also the idea of having someone else produce part of the work and you having too transform it into something that you personally like from what they give you, I feel like it is also a task that I could carry out by myself by improving it and taking it further by using my own imagery on the experimentation, and performing even more experiments on the result - scanning them onto acetate and solarising them, selectively developing ect.