Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition

Some of you will know that a piece of my assemblage was shortlisted for last year's Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition and it was such a blast that I thought I would have another stab at it this year!

This year I thought I'd like to submit a sculpture and a painting (as opposed to two sculptures last year) and plans were all going relatively smoothly until the Achilles monster stuck it's oar in! LOL Having already paid for my entries (yep, just call me tight!) and after a degree of ponderance I decided I would go ahead notwithstanding the plaster cast.

So, here's my first piece, Helicoidal Impulse.



The base of the piece is a vintage brass bell, and yes, if you hold the piece up and thwack the bell it is very musical! :O) The spiral is made from vintage Paxolin circuit boards supported on a bolt through the centre of the bell.


A view looking at the underneathof the spiral.


And, a view looking down.

Bearing in mind that I have to post my entry form by this weekend it would make sense to have completed my second piece as well but nooooooo, that would be too easy wouldn't it now? LOL

My second piece is a self portrait based on this photo:



This year I'm working on a body image project and have recently had a naked photo shoot. Wandering off the point briefly, if you've ever had body acceptance issues I highly recommend having a naked photo shoot. It may sound a bizarre thing to be suggesting but it has been the single most empowering thing I have ever done for myself. If you're local to me (or even if you're not!) then I recommend my good friend, Rob, he's excellent at putting folk at their ease in these situations and takes fantastic photos! If you want to know more, email me.

So, back to the painting... I'm going to do a life size (ish!) portrait but not on a straightforward square canvas! I am using nine canvases of varying sizes which will be joined together like this:


I will do a basic drawing of the figure with the canvases connected but will then paint them seperately mixing paint for each as I go so the finished painting will be purposely imperfect and a little fragmented. Watch this space for progress updates!