- UPDATE: Heartbeat 360 Degree shoot.

This is a rough 360 degree shot of the sculpture Heartbeat which is near completion and is being prepared for exhibiton at the Lawrence Batley Theatre in Huddersfield April-May 2010.
This is just a rough shoot to get a visual record of the piece, in this test the inner light is not swithched on, the next test shoot will have it powered on.

Second Year: Second Project: 'UBUNTU'

This project was inspired when i watched the online documentary, 'I am because we are' by Nathan Rissman aimed at raising awareness of the growing crisis in Malawi, Africa: (http://www.iambecauseweare.com/). Though this film is directly relating to this cause for help, it raises many issues and concepts that apply to us all on a global scale and it was this element that i gained my inspiration.
Within the film they reference a speach by John.F Kennedy in 1963 within which he says:

"For, in the final analysis, our most common link is we all inhabit the same planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal."

This simple quote is the foundation for this project, linking with my previous project and the work 'Heartbeat' i want to create more engaging work that links people together and once again focuses more on what makes us similar then to what is different between us as people.

My initial thoughts are to look into the the psychology of socialisation and perception, as well as looking into contemporary artwork that focuses on viewer participation and develop my own work from there on.

Second Year First Exhibition: 'Heartbeat'

Credits to: Jarred Knott, Triin Birnbaum, Martin Swithenbank and Dan Alder for assisting me in setting up this piece of work for exhibition.

Second Year: First Project. Zabriskie Point Stage 4, Making The Final Piece

So here it is, the final piece of work for this project. The piece has been constructed in wire mesh and is just under 2 metres tall and about a metre and a half in width. As you can see from these pictures documenting the development of the making process, the piece is in the process of being covered in mirror, being attached via a glue gun to the mesh structure. This sculpture has taken over 3 weeks to create the wire framewaork and over 2 weeks to mosaic with mirror and is still to this date not fully completed. Unfortunately, due to the lack of funds and time, the piece will regrettably not be fully finished for the exhibition of this project and will have to be completed at a later date to be entered for outside exhibitions and competitions.

The piece has cost over £120 pounds to make so far and i believe it will take a further £100 pounds to make the piece fully complete and the full completion should be done by the end of january 2010.

Though the piece will be shown within the University exhibition of this project only 3/4's complete, i think the piece is strong enough to still have the impact that was originally intended. I am disappointed it wasn't completed for this show but it is due to external factors beyond my control.

The project has reached it's end and the only thing left is to post pictures of the piece as presented in the Univeristy exhibition and then in the new year, present the piece again once it has been fully completed. I have learnt a great deal from this project and have discovered a strong bond with the process of making work, particularly 3D works. There are elements and aspects from this project that i would like to take forward into my next project after christmas and push not only myself as an artist but also push the boundaries of materials, concepts and what a piece of contemporary art can be.

Second Year: First Project. Zabriskie Point Stage 4, Making

To create the Heart sculpture involes using wire mesh to create the outer shell and overall structure of what the sculpture will be. It can then be reinforced as necessary in order to strengthen the sculpture and enable me to create a surface across the wire so that the mirror shards can be fixed to.

The process of building the heart is a slow one and involes repetitively attaching square sheets of mesh together over and over again but tho this may seem laborious, it enables me to create the form i want much easier and also makes the sculpture somewhat more sturdier as a whole.

Second Year: First Project. Zabriskie Point Stage 3, Development Conclusion.

The conclusion of my developmen stage has finaly arrived. I have come to the decision to combine the two key concepts i came up with together and have them both presented as final pieces of work for this project.

My final idea is to create both the "Time" concept and "Hartbeat" concept and present them as both individual pieces of work but also have them echoing and workng together perhaps.

Second Year: First Project. Zabriskie Point Stage 3, Development 5

Development 5 was a progression from the previous stage. With this concept i wanted to take the idea of the heartbeat even further and try and make it even more effective with its intention.

This concept still involves creating a large scale sculpture of a heart but instead of using polaroid portraits of people attached to it, i would use broken mirrored shards almost like a mosaic across the surface of the sculpture.

The reason for the replacement the polaroids is that on some level i think that there is still some level of distance between the work and the viewer. Theres a boundary between the viewer and the the work that prevents them from making that personal connection with it that is incredibly important to the themes and meanings i'm trying to represent.

Replacing the polaroids with mirror will enable the viewer to see themselves within the piece of work and thus they have an immediate connection with the piece.

Also using mirror inplace of photographs emphasises the idea of repetition even further with the idea that the sculpture is placed within a constant repetitive state because it is constantly reflecting its environment.

I believe this concept is far more effective than the previous idea for the sculpture however due to the materials that would be used i.e. the mirror shard mosaic, the sculptures ability to move and simulating the movement of an actual beating hard is impaired. So if this idea is taken forward to final development a compromise would have to be reached.

Second Year: First Project. Zabriskie Point Stage 3, Development 4

Keeping in mind my previous concept of time, i began thinking of other pieces of work that could work alongside it to reinforce the idea of repetition even further.
I wanted to create a piece of work that would explore the idea of repetitive notions and experiences that we all go through on a regular basis without being consciously aware. Like the idea of time, we all share this experience and for the most part we are unaware of the seconds and minutes passing by unless we have some activity scheduled for within that day. So i wanted to create a piece of work that echoed this same idea but it had to be something that we all expperience and that we all share.

It occurred to me that there is one thing that we all go through every second of everday without really realising it, our heartbeat. Our hearts beat around 100,000 times a day which equals around 35million times a year. On average our heats beat around 2.5 billion times within the average human lifespan.
Along with time, the heart is one of the single most repetitive things on the planet and only stops repeating its process when an individual dies either permanently or temporarily.
Every human being has a heart and our hearts are constantly beating away inside of us and we are mostly completely unaware of it until certain moments such as when we run and it beats harder. This is something that connects every person on the planet, disregarding age, race and gender.

This first concept design that i came up with was the idea to make a large sculpture of a heart and have polaroid photographs of everyone i encountered within a week attached all over it to emphasise the fact we are all connected by our hearts. This concept involved the creation of a large scale sculpture of a human heart which would actually beat as a real heart would, with a mechanical system inside which would create the illusion of the pulsating heartbeat.

The aim is so that when the viewer looked upon the piece they would feel and see some form of connection that unifes us all and echoes the precious nature of life.

Second Year: First Project. Zabriskie Point Stage 3, Development-Studio Space

These are images of the development work displayed within my studio space at University.

Second Year: First Project. Zabriskie Point Stage 3, Development 3

Alongside the first film concept i came up with, i began thinking of yet another film proposal. This time i had the idea of creating a film that would emphasise the repeating nature of time and the way in which we measure time.
Everday the sun goes up and goes down, the hand on the clock goes round and round and this is a constant. It never stops, each day it keeps on going and to me this idea of time is one of the single most significant repetitive notions thats exists, it's constantly self perpetuating.
So i wanted to capture this within a video piece, to make the viewer slightly aware of that fact. Opening their eyes to this concept of time that we all seem to not really consciously pick up on.
The aim of this piece was to have a digital clock projected large scale onto a wall within the exhibition space, not recording the actual time but instead having it set so that for every 10 seconds that went by, the clock would move ahead one minute. This is so the clock projection would cycle through the whole 24hours within a day in a much shorter length of time, to the point where viewers wuld be able to see a more immediate response. If the projection was to move with mormal time, a viewer would literally have to wait within the exhibition space for more then 24hours to know the clock is essentially on a loop. So speeding up the process would cut this time in half and even if any one single viewer didn't see the whole cycle they would be able to experience atleast a good part of it for the duration of their visit.

Second Year: First Project. Zabriskie Point Stage 3, Development 2

After the unsuccessful blinking experiments inspired by Andy Warhol i did previously, i began to further develop the ideas of repetitive movements even more. I began thinking of ideas for a possible film/video piece that could include a whole collection of repetitive behaviours and actions which could be used within a piece of work. Again i went back to the drawing board and listed things that we do that are repetitive and objects that also seem to repeat and go round in a sort of loop.
Once i had them i began sketching out a rough storyboard documenting a rough plan of the film installation i would be interested in making. The film would include the processes of blinking that i touched upon in previous developments and also including notions of hand movements, travelling, eating and speaking and metaphorical suggestions of repetition such as including a bicycle wheel in motion.

The result was a 14 page storyboard documenting frame by frame how the film would be composed, resulting in a 3-5 minute film piece based around the idea of repetitive behvaiours and processes. All designed to make the viewer aware of the repetitive nature of life and how even the simplist one off things are repeated in some way.

Second Year: First Project. Zabriskie Point Stage 3, Development

My first experimental tests involved looking at the idea of blinking as a repetitive movement. At this stage i was interested in looking at repetitive behaviours that we all undergo throughout our daily lives, particularly behaviours that we are consciously unaware we are doing.

Blinking was one of the behaviours that i brainstormed, it's a process we all do on a daily basis. Every other second of everyday we all blink, it's a continuous process that for the most part we are al unaware we are doing so i wanted to look at this firstly and use the compositions and ideas from my research into Andy Warhol and apply them in some form to my own work.


The result was a large series of images documenting the process of an eye blinking with each alternate image changing each time. The series of images were then placed into a powerpoint with a 1 second gap between slides as a initial test for a possible video piee that could be done for further development. However, after this series of work was completed i felt that they didn't really grasp the idea's that i wanted to get at and that they were rather one dimensional, so i decided to abandon the idea of looking at blinking as the main concept i ran with in search of something which had more depth.

Second Year: First Project. Zabriskie Point Stage 2, Research

Taking the concept of repetition as the focus for my project i began by looking at artists that firstly worked within the 1960's period that would relate back to the time the fim was made and artists that were part of the same movements that came out of that period also. So my initial research began by looking at the works of David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein and of course Andy Warhol. The Pop Art movement that seemed to be born from the 60's was heavily based upon the idea of repetitive materials, compositions and techniques. Hockneys works by layering dozens and dozens of photographs layered on top of each other to creat one whole single imaged was very interesting to me and i original began thinking of ways i could used similar processes to achive a similar feel and look, however i soon changed my mind and looked more closely at Warhols work in particular for inspiration.

With Warhols work, particular his celebrity portraits, he uses the same image composition again and again with just the colour varying in each series. It was this that first caought my interest,i wanted to look at modern day objects and processes and apply this colour variation to them to create a similar effect as Warhol and see what effect it would acheive.

[Images on the left are research that are displayed within my studio space]

Second Year: First Project. Zabriskie Point Stage 1, The Brief

The current project i am working on is the first of my second year projects at university entitled, Zabriskie Point.

Our task was to draw themes and concept ideas that we could develop further and base our projects on by watching Antonioni's film "Zabriskie Point".
The film was made in the 1960's and is very much a reflection upon the social climate and movement at that time. The film features unique and experimental camera work aswell a unique and equally experimental soundtrack which gives the film a heavily artistic feel and quality. Overall the storyline is pretty much none existant and is the weakest point of the whole film, to which the director was heavily slated for. However, the film has become somewhat of a cult hit and has been able to find a unique fan base within social circles today.

The whole class was asked to watch the fim and make notes of areas and themes of interest that we could take onto further study.
When i watched the film, i was at first very confused and unsure of what it was i had just seen but i was able to draw many themes from it that were of ineterest. Within the first week on the project i cycled through these themes attempting to find the one that i connected with the most to take forward in my work.

After negating the themes of consumerism, environmentalism and so on i eventually settled on the idea of repetition. When watching the film i noticed that certain scenes, camera angles and particularly the end sequence, seemed to repeat themselves. The repetitive car journeys throughout, the constant featuring of billboards and commercial signs, the repeating explosion at the end sequence.

So i decided that i would base my project on the idea of repetition.

First Year Work, March 2009. " I Think Therfore I Am"

This painting is the result of my first year project on the body within which i eventually chose to look at my brother as the focus of the whole project. My brother suffers from a high degree of autism and is unable to properly communicate with the world around and with the people that surround him. It is imposible to say how much he fully understands of his environment and of his own existance as a person, and yet despite this he still has a personality and intellect that is more unique and special than any other we see from day to day.

With a mind no greater then that of a 4 year old and the body of a 22 year old you can imagine that life for those around him may be difficult and at times hard to cope with. But through all this comes from a different perspective and it came to my attention that the only perspective that matters is his and thus i decided to look at the idea of what it is that we consider normal. what is normality? who is different? how do we define this difference?

So the aim of this project was to capture not just the likenes of my brother but to also comment on the fact that to me, he is normal, he is the essence of this normality that society seems to operate around. To the viewer this is just a simple portrait of a young man, but within the painting i left simple hints such as the gaze of the eyes for example to give the impression that there is more to him then meets the eye.

Initially this was designed to be a series of paintings however due to time constraints within the project deadline they were unable to be created, but this is an ongoing project for me as an artist and plans are already in motion to continue the series of portraits as originally intended.

First Year Work, March 2009. Hidden Place

Within this project I wanted to explore the place inside each and every one of us that seeks more than just materialistic gratification.

Whether we are aware that it exists or not, it is there, a deep burning desire to understand one’s place in the world and to ultimately understand the nature and reason for life itself.
And by our trying to reach this knowledge, uncovering who we are and what it means to be human.

My piece of work entitled: How Can I Change?-‘Essence in a jar’ is my attempt to conceptualise this concept.

I tried to keep an aura of ambiguity with this piece because I don’t like creating pieces of work that are too literal and tell the viewer what they are seeing in front of them. I want the viewer to be able to take as little or as much as they wish from this work as long as they take a second to stop and take in work.
With this piece it is not my intention to try and tell people how they should think or act but rather to provoke thought within the viewer and hopefully make them want to become better versions of the people they are already.

First Year Work, November 2008. Vanitas Paintings

These are a collection of three painting that were done as part of a collaborative group project within my first year of study at Huddersfield University. In this project me and my peers were asked to each create a series of paintings reflecting upon the conept of Vanitas and Memento mori for an exhibition themed around the concept of Paradise and Revolution.

Our group wanted to put a contemporary twist on this very classic and iconic theme within painting and almos re-invent it for a contemporary audience. With my series of paintings i wanted to look at the idea of deconstruction and how therough the process of revolution, things are lost and distorted.
We all painted the same set of objects and then worked over them in whatever way we saw fit, each of us tackling the same idea of Vanitas with regards to the theme of Paradise and Revolution.

The final result was that we all had several paintings each, all representing out own interpretations of Vanitas paintings which when all displayed together created a powerful and interesting body of work.


"Buried Skull" Arcylic and Emulsion paint on canvas.


"Universal Flag" Arylic and Emulsion paint on canvas

Foundation Work From March 2008

This was an original self portrait study which became the basis of my final major project within my foundation degree. With this work i wanted to take an abstract way of looking at oneself and forgetting about tone variations and any form of texture or detail. Essentially breaking down the portrait to its basic structure, keeping the mark making very simple using single bold lines attempting to keep the portrait as honest as possible. Ths first study of myself was used as a template for further works to which i played around with block colour variations and eventually ended with the series of work being taken forward to exhibition at my college and then being requested for exhibition at Doncaster museum and Art gallery in August/September of 2008.

Foundation Work From February 2008

These are drawings of scupltures from the British museum and from other collections. With these pieces wanted to convey the coldness of the stone and marble which was used to create these beautifully crafted and emotive sculptures. So i chose a cool colour palette and tried to draw them in a detailed yet sum what vague way. The drawings were done in stages layering pastels and rubbing back to create the sense of depth. The overall effect of this made the drawings look asif they were drawn from ice but still retained the level of detail that was needed to define the form.

Foundation Work From December 2007

Burlesque Dress, Hand Stitched Paper Photocopies.

This was a project i worked on based upon a workshop i took part in orientated around the creation and expression of randomly created textures layered with a graphic structured element. The purpose was to to create textures using paint in a loose way letting the paint imprint onto the surface of the card without any prior thought or planning. Then to add more structured elements on top of this, which would create and emphasise the composition and give and interesting balance to the chaotic nature of the paint.

The workshop was only on for one day but i decided to take it further and create a project expanding on this idea. I loved the way the cards looked and came up with the idea of making them into some sort of gown or costume. I settled on attempting to make a burlesque style dress using scans of the original cards printed onto paper and sown together to create the outfit. The result was a highly detailed and interesting piece of work which is unfortunately incomplete due to time restraints. See above image for final piece.


Acrylic Paint On Card With Stencil Layering, Individual Cards.

Early Works From 2006 - 2007 Period

Life drawing sketches done in black wax crayon on A2 scale paper. This was from a small series of works that were taken forward to final exhixhibition at John Leggott College in June 2007.