-
When I think about ‘The Cyclops’, my mind goes immediately to Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion monster in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). Maybe for this reason alone, I looked instead at the smallest example of a cyclops I could rustle-up for The Kick-About No. 165, hence my decision to create an upscaled version of a one-eyed water…
-
In our last Kick-About, Alexander Calder’s Goldfish Bowl prompted responses to a small, self-contained world of wire, movement, and suspended forms. This week, we turn one eye to Odilon Redon’s The Cyclops. As always, the works that follow were made in a short time — and for all previous editions of The Kick-About, go here.…
-
We grow Lunaria annua in our garden, commonly known as honesty. After flowering, the plant produces silicles: translucent, pearly seed pods that have inspired a host of evocative common names, including Judas’s Penny, Money-in-Both-Pockets, Penny Flower, Silver Plate, and Peter’s Pence, all inspired by their shimmering, coin-like appearance. They also remind me of certain sea…
-
In our last Kick-About, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva prompted responses to architectural abstractions and expansive, unfolding interiors. This week, our muse is Alexander Calder’s Goldfish Bowl, a miniature, self-contained world of wire, movement, and humour. As always, the works that follow were made in a short time, and for all previous editions of The…
-
I love Vieira da Silva’s paintings—our muse for The Kick-About No.163—they have the quality of care-worn tapestries or bedcovers faded with use. Such rich surfaces and terrains. I got some 12″ x 12″ artist boards and, without too much thought, I went about creating the conditions by which I could produce some evocative surfaces of…
-
It was with great sadness that I learned that Jan Blake, a long-time contributor to The Kick-About, had died. Her friend Francesca Maxwell, who shared the news with me, wrote: “Donati’s Comet has been in my mind a lot in the last few days. My dear friend Jan Blake, who loved the Kick-About so much,…
-
Inspired by Donati’s Comet – our prompt for The Kick-About No. 162 – these images evoke the Moon but are in fact photographs of the corroded bowls of a series of metal bird baths from our garden. You’re looking directly down into the metal basins, where sparrows and starlings come to drink and bathe, and…
-
In our last Kick-About, Lee Bontecou gave us forms that felt part-machine, part-organism, and part imagined architecture. This week, we look much further out, to Donati’s Comet — a nineteenth-century spectacle of light, movement, and vast distance. As always, the works that follow were made in a short time — and for all previous editions…
-
My immediate association with Lee Bontecou’s sculptures and drawings was the kind of speculative, temporary architecture you see at world expos, like the 1951 Festival of Britain. I was thinking about masts, tensile structures and suspended orbs – pavilions showcasing ‘the modern’. With this in mind, I set about kit-bashing an architectural maquette for our…
Red's Kingdom 