Hepworth Gallery & Yorkshire Sculpture Park - Abstract and figurative sculptures

This is going to be a HUGE post so I apologise! But yesterday (21.5.14) we went on a college trip to the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield and then on to Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Sheffield! It was amazing to visit these places and on such a beautiful sunny day too! So in the Hepworth Gallery there were plenty of sculptures, Henry Moore being the main artist, showing body distortion- perfect for my Abstraction project! These sculptures are so abstract that they aren't necessarily recognisable as figures. I like this as it makes the viewer think and look from several different angles and perspectives, to try and make sense in their own minds about the sculpture. This promotes independent thinking; you can make your own mind up about where you think the figure lies and what the sculpture is trying to show.

 This figurative sculpture is more obviously a person, yet still very abstract!

 Barbara Hepworth sculptures: These pieces are just simple shapes made from alabaster and therefore are very abstract, however these pieces may not be particularly figurative anyway, they are simply 'forms'.

 I really like this sculpture! It's definitely a figure however it is abstract and not obvious, making you think about it! Having read the name 'Winged Figure', I can now pick out the parts that I believe are the wings, however I'm not necessarily correct and that intrigues me :D

 Onto Yorkshire Sculpture Park now, here are some photos of sculptures that I took as we wandered around the huge grounds! The abstraction of these sculptures varies a lot, with some being obvious figures with only slight distortion of proportion, such as the one below, and some being so abstract that it takes a while to work out what the sculpture actually is!

 This is an Elisabeth Frink sculpture, made from bronze. These sculptures have scarred surfaces created by repeatedly coating an armature with wet plaster; each coating is distressed and broken, eliminating detail and generalising form. Frink's sculptures express masculine strength, struggle and aggression and I find them very odd to look at, maybe a little scary too! The eyes are particularly strange as they are rather detailed and seem to be staring into space, as if there is someone trapped inside (that sounds really strange, I know, but it honestly creeps me out as I have a phobia of mannequins and these are quite similar!). These are rather abstract as they are tall but the legs seem shorter and thinner than they should be, also the faces are completely wrong as the eyes aren't in the centre of the head, making the forehead smaller and the other facial features larger too.

 These are rather abstract as they have no heads or arms, just huge chests, legs and feet. The surface of these is scarred too, creating a sort of veiny texture which I found very interesting.

 This is so interesting too! This female figure with a rabbit head is so strange and the texture of it is absolutely amazing! I really want to incorporate this into my textiles skins project too! It's like lots and lots of bits or wire, turned into a mesh sort of thing to create this huge mesh figure! It's in two pieces that are separated by about a metre, rather than being pushed completely together. This figure is abstract because of the animal head, so that's possibly something I could look into- abstracting using animal features! It would certainly make the human form more... interesting!

 This bronze sculpture is larger than the average person, maybe about 7 feet high? It's not really abstract at all, it's more about showing how the modern world lives, with modern clothing and a phone in hand, but that's just my interpretation of this sculpture.

 This one is very strange as it is partly coloured, partly plain, partly shiny, partly matte! It reminded me of a Michael Jackson dance move! This is also not very abstract but the concept of it being in two different... styles, if you like, interested me so I took a photo!

Here is another Henry Moore sculpture. I took two photos from different perspectives just to see if I could make sense of the sculpture, I can tell it's quite figurative, but it's still very abstract so I moved around it to connect the two pieces in my perspective. I found that this didn't really help and I preferred to look at it from the first photo anyway, as it made more sense to me from this angle.

 This sculpture is so surreal! I didn't notice on the way past the first time but on the way back I looked up and saw the sculpture on top of the tree. It's very figurative and not abstract at all, apart from the setting and context it's in I guess! I like it though, despite how surreal it is. There are a few different ways of looking at it, for example, it could be someone on a diving board about to dive in, it could be someone about to commit suicide, or it could just be someone standing and thinking about life, perhaps feeling on top of the world? Or maybe they feel they can relax higher up. Possibly they could be watching over someone? I really don't know, and I love that that's part of the mystery of it!

 This is another Henry Moore sculpture I believe, in the middle of a field! It was going to be a long trek to it and we were running out of time so I decided just to take a long distance picture of it instead! This is very abstract and I would have liked to have taken more photos from different angles but this just wasn't possible at the time.

 This sculpture is quite odd as the body is rather wide and fairly flat, with a small head and skinny arms and legs- totally not in proportion! But this is another way I could abstract my life drawing work if I desired.

And that's all the figurative sculptures I managed to photograph! But overall it was a wonderful day!

Tights! Like a second skin?

While sat with a pair of tights on I noticed the tiny pattern on them and took a photo! Tights are skin tight, like a second skin, so this relates to y skins project! I could make some sort of skin tight garment, all about covering up? Not being comfortable in your own skin? This tiny pattern could possibly be created using knit? But on a larger scale, obviously! Hmm thinking time...

Plaster abstraction sculpture - developing the technique

On Tuesday in the 3D session we were creating wire mesh armatures and stuffing them with newspaper for added strength. This was to prepare them for the plaster we were to coat them with! Never used this technique before, only done plaster casts so it was interesting to be using plaster in a different way! We had to wear overalls, Kevlar gloves and goggles when using the wire to avoid scratching or stabbing ourselves or each other! When using the plaster we had to wear overalls and rubber gloves as the plaster can irritate the skin if subjected to prolonged contact. We cut pieces of scrim to place into the plaster and coat the armature with, similar to the mod roc process. I started from the bottom and worked upwards, paying particular attention to the neck as this can become very unstable and unsupportive of the head when building up an armature like this (something I've discovered with previous sculptures!). I had to prop my sculpture up with cardboard despite this as the plaster was making it very heavy and the head was leaning to one side! I haven't managed to finish the whole thing yet as the plaster needs time to harden before I start again otherwise it would just fall over and the sculpture would be ruined! :o I plan to finish this after half term and make smears with my fingers in the top coat of plaster to create a smudged paint style, similar to the Frank Auerbach's paintings (last photos). I'd like to combine this style with the images of facial distortion that I have taken where faces are pressed against glass but I'm still in the process of working out how to! But I shall keep you updated :)

Abstraction using clay

Started off not really knowing how to go about abstracting the face, to make it look like it had been squashed, similar to what Jenny Saville did with her body. Dropping the clay on the table sort of splatted it, but I needed to control it more. Using my thumbs and fingers I sort of wiped the clay to blur / smudge the features, however that made the faces look scared and screaming! I then went on to smudge the clay more and all over, to create a similar look to a painting by Frank Auerbach, where it looks like he has physically painted a woman with oil paints. Because oils are fairly think, I could create this effect with the clay, the smears I made with my fingers were like brush strokes with thick paint. In the end I was adding bits of clay to the basic bust model ad smearing them as I added each tiny piece. This build up of clay looks really effective and I'm thinking of what other materials to try to create a similar model but on a larger scale?

Corsets and heels - Pain in the name of beauty?

Yes, I own a corset! And lots of pairs of heels.. Wearing these things distort my figure, the corset pulls me in at the waist, giving me an hourglass figure which most women desire and is desired so much because it is what we recognise as 'beautiful' in this day and age. It also emphasises the width of the hips and pushes up the breasts to emphasize sexual attraction, again, making the woman feel beautiful and attractive to the opposite sex. High heels put pressure on the balls of your feet and can shorten the ligament in your calf if you wear heels too often, meaning you won't be able to flatten your feet properly as they will have adapted to the pressure of wearing heels. Corsets are tight around the body and heels hurt the feet - why do we insist upon putting ourselves through this pain in the name of beauty? All to boost our self esteem and because our warped views of beauty tell us this is desirable! Basically, we aim to please... /:

More skin pressed against glass images

Took some photos of my brother pressing his face up against glass for more abstraction images to work from. I also got him to press his hand and arm up against the glass to see what kind of effect this created. The hand worked well but not the arm as much because obviously there aren't any features on the arm so only the skin gets squashed. My brother is only 13 so has very young skin anyway, so it would be good to try this with older, wrinkled skin to contrast the different effects on the glass.

Male historical corsets - distortion for beauty affects men too!

While these illustrations are rather extreme, this demonstrates the way men used corsets and padding to 'improve' their appearances too. The male shape was very muscular therefore padding was used on the calf muscles, arms, bottom, thighs etc and the waist was pulled in to make the chest appear broader.

Historical bustle - Figure distortion

The perfect figure has been desired for a long time, originally with bustles in the Victorian era. This was a very extreme measure to create a more curvaceous figure as this was very in fashion at the time and well off women wouldn't be seen dead without one! Nowadays, women still desire a larger, rounded bottom, sometimes opting for 'bum implants' as a drastic way to change the shape of their bottoms. Another method is to buy special pants (such as the ones below) that give some extra padding around the bottom to create a fuller looking, more curvaceous backside. This is quite discrete and obviously is not to the same extent as the Victorian bustles. This distortion on the figure is ideally to improve the person's appearance, whereas much of the other distortion work I have researched into has been for the purpose of exploration and creativity, often showing the subject in a more unattractive light.

Contortionism distorts the body

Contortionists distort their bodies to fit into small spaces and to place their bodies in abnormal positions. It would be interesting to look at the bone structure of contortionists and how this affects their bodies. Putting your body in these positions will inevitably put strain on parts of the body that aren't used to it / aren't designed to cope with a lot of strain, causing the body to adapt to support the pressure.