In our last Kick-About, we looked to the work of Nnenna Okore, whose sculptures transform simple materials into forms alive with texture and rhythm. This week’s prompt is the spinning top—an object of balance and motion. As always, the works that follow were made in a short time—and for all previous editions of The Kick-About, go here.
Tom Beg
Graeme Daly
“Being very fond of the exhilarating nature of long exposure light painting it seemed like a no brainer for this week’s Kick-About. I had to make do with what I had to achieve these photos. To my surprise a handy app called Even Longer for my iPhone proved impressive considering I didn’t have my proper camera. The tools I did have included a tripod, some lights, coloured cellophane sheets, a large plastic lightbulb with a screw top, some heavy-duty holdback clips, and a typically very dark Irish night.
I secured the plastic lightbulb to the fishing rod using a holdback clip and inserted the lights within. With my makeshift wand of light ready I attached my phone to my tripod, hit the shutter, and ran quickly to my spot to continuously swing around in a circle and capture the movement and bleed of light.
I went through quite a few iterations of fucking about with this new app to get it to work how I wanted, as well as experimenting with different light sources and their level of brightness. Some of my results had my face within the centre of the circle which had a sinister feeling to them, and I do like those, so I may share them and return to this in the future. I would love to experiment with using other apparatuses or lights to create a perfect circle. In some cases I got close, and I think the Irish landscape has me reeling to do more expansive, larger outputs. All in all, lots of fun — next time I want to take it further.”
@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.ie
Charly Skilling
Spinning tops have been around for millennia and have changed very little in shape or design. Most “innovations” have been to do with the process of storing the energy in the top to start with—by hand, or cord or crank. But the shape has changed little. So I crocheted the shape in a range of sizes, using some bamboo rings to provide support at the widest point. Then I strung them together and hung them from a light fitting. Then twist one central string, release and hey-ho! – A column of spinning tops!
Gary Thorne
“What a process! Charity shop lampshade offered up a mold for papier mache cast, bit of tufting, then a concept drawing, more tufting, then a coil weave base. Full stop as it seemed to not have a top to toe relationship. Left out the dome and coiled to a conclusion. Dome might end up as something else one day. Question was how to spin it, KA ingenuity soon kicked in. Thanks for an entertaining two weeks.”
James Randall
“I kicked off with a quick phone sketch but when full sizing the image it just didn’t cut it. So I started adding some street photos and textures and some sketchy branches – not sure what it collectively means but there it is.“
Kerfe Roig
“I had this idea that I would make circles of paint for a monoprint and swirl the paper around on top of it to create a spinning effect. That didn’t work very well so I just printed a bunch of circles in different colors. At the last minute I decided to print one on black instead of white. That turned out to be the key to achieving the effect I wanted. As is my wont, I cut up the various prints, layered them, photographed them, and then put them into radial blur in Photoshop. The ones with the black print as ground were by far the most interesting, the contrast of black and white working to make more distinct patterns. It’s always dangerous to start playing with filters in Photoshop, but luckily, my original idea of using radial blur was in fact the best filter for spinning my circles like a top. That doesn’t mean I didn’t try a few others as well, but I didn’t end up going too far down the rabbit hole this time.”
kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com
Phil Gomm
“You’ll laugh when I tell you how I made these images—at least, my husband laughed when he saw me walking a 4K webcam out of the back door into the garden on a very long extension lead…. and then whirling it around in very fast circles. (Not sure the sparrows were as entertained). I then chose a few individual frames from the resulting footage, so what you see here are just that.”
philgomm.com / behance.net/Phil_Gomm
Lewis Punton
“Taking on this latest, very kinetic Kick-About prompt lead me pretty immediately down a rabbit hole of ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) photography and all its painterly wonders. With not much more than experimentation in mind, I meandered through the garden one evening hoping to see where spinning and twisting my trusty Fujifilm could take me—rather than worrying too much about locking down any real concept or theme beyond the initial Spinning Top prompt for this fortnight’s creative jamboree. I’m largely happy with the resulting images, particularly those alluding to some kind of burst of bright light or a far off abstract landscape. I did however find myself somewhat chasing the success of the ‘yellow’ hero image to no avail… Anyone that’s dabbled in the world of ICM will be very well aware that you tend to end up with more misses than hits in your camera roll, but when you get a hit, boy do you get a hit!”
Next time, our prompt is Arcimboldo’s Vertumnus—the strange and opulent portrait of Emperor Rudolf II made entirely from fruits, flowers, and vegetables…
Red's Kingdom 
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