Our previous Kick-About celebrated the idiosyncrasies of the ceramicist George Ohr, whose vessels are characterised by their deformations and glossy, melty glazes. As preoccupied with optical wobbles is this week’s muse, Victor Vasarely, inspiring another collection of new works made in a short time. For all previous editions of The Kick-About, go here.
James Randall
“Op art was an early sources of wonder – smooth colour blends, fake perspective and lots of detail. So it was fun to revisit here – of course repeat patterns and colour blending are easy to achieve on a computer so I tried to introduce texture and played with depth in three attempts. The star pic is playing with China flag colours and US flag colours – seemed a good idea as China transitions slowly to the worlds major super power…“
“A note of thanks to you all for your inspiration—I was fortunate to win a small award at our Brisbane Portrait Prize for a pic I created for the Sheila Hicks Kick-About. (James is on the left). So nice to have the opportunity to make playful works with friends just for fun.”
Emily Clarkson
“Very much misjudged how long it would take me to try and take apart a Vasarely optical artwork! Please find attached a crude moving version of one of his artworks—Altaï III.”
Charly Skilling
“Thank you Victor Vasarely and The Kick-about! That was a fun few hours spent with ruler, french curve and marker pens. The red, white and black reminded me of the colour scheme of my son’s teenage bedroom (late 1980’s), but the blue tones were much more soothing – more like an exercise in mindfulness!”
Kerfe Roig
“Short on time this week, I just took a pack of small origami paper, cut the colors in it into circles and squares, and spent some time arranging and rearranging. Obviously, this is an exercise with infinite variation possibilities. I also revised a couple appropriate poems into pi poems—where the syllable count for each line is based on the sequence of numbers in pi.”
What Does It Mean to Square the Circle?
1
draw circles
and
then squares—or cut
them
out of paper, let
them arrange themselves as they will—if
you move
one you must change them all–
the balance shifts—there
is always
more to reveal, hide
2
the shape of
my
days remain a
part
from context—set a
drift, pivoting on a moving ax
is—now
can never be found, and
then becomes caught, cut
off, unbound
kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com
Phil Gomm
“I was drawn to the tumescence of some of Vasarely’s op-art – that slight sense they give of deformations produced by swelling—of blisters, goitres, galls and burls. I’ve got these big glass paper-weight things that are filled with suspended bubbles, and these images began with me filming them on my 4K webcam as I spun them through 360 degrees… I was then able to process the footage through various types of layering and manipulation to produce these resulting images. Some of them are very organic in a ‘Fantastic Voyage’ style, while others were nudging nicely towards ‘Pearl and Dean.’”
Marion Raper
“Well, all I can say is that Victor Vasarely was one clever dude! To be able to create artworks using mathematical shapes etc is truly fantastic. Unfortunately, I do not have this gift, so this is my humble offering of a few tangled up birds on what was intended to be an op-art background but looks like they just got caught in some chicken wire…”
Lewis Punton
“I found that so many of Vasarely’s illusionary images read to me as warped planes of bulging structures. Foundations of worlds that boasted buildings stuck in a wonderland-like state of the uncanny. With this nugget of inspiration firmly lodged into place, I took to creating some warped forms of my own from heavy card stock, a crafting knife, and a ferociously reliable stapler – hoping that the rippling forms would play into my search for pavilions constructed from illusion…”
Graeme Daly
“Here’s The Kick-About!”
@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog
And from the optical illusions of Victor Vasarely, to the evocative projections of the magic lantern…
Red's Kingdom 
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