How I photocopied snakes and brains
#175: The story behind my new artworks, handcrafted installations and a talk with Ed Ruscha.
This week I've been busy working on new pieces for the upcoming London solo exhibition, so I wanted to take you through what I made.
‘Unpredictable Lunatic’
(Mixed media on wood panel 11” x 14”)
I found a strange dog toy in a local shop. It was like a rubber mouth with a handle on the back that the dog would chew on and squeak, while making the dog seem as though it had a big set of teeth! Immediately I knew I could make something with it, so I took it back to the studio and distorted it with the scanner to stretch the mouth out into this menacing grin.
From this point I thought it would be cool to make an abstract face, so I found a plastic eyeball and repeated the same process. The two naturally fitted together so well and looked really bizarre, with an almost intimidating energy. I printed these out on different papers; red to suggest lips or lipstick, and blue for the colour of the eye.
These were both pasted onto a wooden panel, where the ink ran onto the white background and created a really beautiful texture.
‘I Keep Getting Stuck Inside My Own Head’
(Mixed media on wood panel 11” x 14”)
Last week I found this plastic brain which had been used for medical demonstrations. You could open it up and see inside, so I photocopied the flat interior of the brain and scanned it onto my computer. I then covered a sheet of white A4 paper with yellow ‘post-it’ notes and put it into my printer.
The image of the brain was then printed onto the notes, which I could then peel off and rearrange onto a panel in a more loose fashion.
I had painted the background in grey which I really loved against the yellow. It’s a really graphic piece that stands out so well when hung on the wall.
‘Too Late to Turn Back’
(Mixed media on wood panel 8” x 10”)
Rubber snake + photocopier… what’s not to love?
The copy came out great but I had to think for a while of how to use it. Then I realised I could make progressively smaller images and arrange them into this kind of spiral. It became like an optical illusion where the snakes tail could go on forever, giving a sense of falling or being trapped.
Writing this I’ve realised all 3 artworks were made using a toy version of a real thing. This wasn’t a theme or planned at all, but it’s interesting how these coincidences can happen sometimes!
Exhibition details:
Joe Boyd - ‘Strange Fascinations’
Saturday 11th October - Thursday 16th October
The Crypt Gallery
Euston Road, London
NW1 2BA
Entry: Free
Something I’ve been looking into
Monster Chetwynd makes theatrical, handcrafted installations that retell specific local histories and myths: ‘Pond Life: Albertopolis and the Lily’ (2023) filled Gloucester Road’s disused platform with five four-metre sculptural discs inhabited by frogs, salamanders and tortoises that reference the Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition, and was accompanied by a short film in which she appears as the “Fact Hungry Witch.” ‘Gorgon’s Head Playground’ for the 16th Istanbul Biennial was realised as a giant Medusa-head playground whose slides become serpentine heads, installed with local craftspeople in Maçka Park. In ‘The Cat’s Whiskers’ (2022) she showed four hand-blown glass dioramas, made with skilled glassmakers, that reimagine episodes from the lives of Northumbrian saints, populating tiny theatrical scenes with squid, otters and winged demonic figures. These projects consistently use handmade spectacle, local histories and folkloric characters to rework public architecture and communal stories, turning specific place-based research into absurd, embodied tableaux that invite new ways of looking at shared pasts.
You should definitely check this out
Rick Rubin talks to one of my all time favourite artists: Ed Ruscha.
Cheers,
Joe