In our last Kick-About, we explored the woven structures, patterns, and textures of Anni Albers. This week, we turn to Alberto Giacometti, best known for his unmistakable sculptures of elongated figures. As always, the works that follow were made in a short time. For all previous editions of The Kick-About, go here.
Itta Howie
“Urban self-portraits with gates, signposts, and trees in the evening sun.“
Charly Skilling
“These last couple of weeks, here in south-east Britain, we have been coping with a heatwave. Our temperatures are nothing compared with those experienced elsewhere in the world, but our water supply immediately came to a spluttering halt, and large parts of Kent were without fresh water for several days. So the rush was on for bottled water, and every simple everyday task became a problem: washing, cooking, cleaning. Just about everything requires water at some stage of the process.
Now, I know that in many parts of the world people cope with these conditions every day of their lives, and many others experience them regularly according to the season. But the Brits are just not very good at it. It wasn’t for long, and nobody died because of it (as far as I know), but there were a lot of very hot, very grumpy people about.
So when I thought about the stretched limbs and bodies of Giacometti’s figures, I found myself thinking about hot, stretched people, melting in the heat.”
Kerfe Roig
“I’ve had this idea for a while to decorate one of the sticks I’ve collected while out walking with embroidery floss and charms, inspired by Native American Manitokanac wood spirit guardians, which were places for both prayer and the exchange of gifts. Giacometti’s figures reminded me of it.
Photographing it on its own didn’t seem to capture its essence, so I put it in a candle holder with a few items around it and a painted mandala behind it — that was better. Then I wrote a little poem.”
spirit
an opening approaches
and then fades into a forest
of questions, punctuated
by circles of silence–
but the feeling lingers,
a whisper in my bones
James Randall
“I began by riffing on Giacometti’s drawings. Then I played with a sketchy take on his suspended sculptures and concluded by fiddling with a skinny figure, which became an ode to memory.“
Phil Gomm
“More tiny, table-top sculptures inspired by Giacometti’s strange, attenuated figures. I had half a packet of mass-produced vinyl heads I’d sourced for this Kick-About project, and one of them was stuck on top of a pencil in my jam jar of pens by my desk. I dug out some of the wooden cutlery left over from this Kick-About project and pushed their handles into the vinyl heads. That done, I then mixed up a deep yoghurt pot’s worth of plaster and dripped the heads-on-sticks like coating toffee-apples. When they were dry, I stuck the business end of the cutlery into bases made of air-drying clay, so the figures could stand up. I dipped the bottom halves of the figures in more plaster, and repeated the process at both ends until I had them coated. When they were dry, I used some stove paint to change their appearance from plaster to metal, and then went about applying various paint finishes to produce the approximation of bronzes. There were five figures originally, but I broke one while being a bit over-zealous with the palms of my hands (which I was using instead of paint brushes to produce the patina).
The shape of the figures’ heads remind me of the seed heads of poppies, which share that flattened shape and pronounced ridge (called a stigmatic disc apparently). As these figures share the monk-like vibe of their kit-bashed forbears, I’m naming them ‘Stigmatics’.”
“Given that the Stigmatics have mysterious ways, I imagined one of their rituals. ‘Taranto’ comes from tarantism, a folk belief and ritual complex in southern Italy, especially around Taranto, in which a person was believed to have been bitten or possessed by the tarantula. The ‘cure’ was music and intense dancing, sometimes frantic, convulsive, circular, or trance-like. Not 100% sure why these ideas came together as they did, but I made a short film to evoke the Stigmatics doing their thing in the heat haze of some distant land.”
philgomm.com / behance.net/Phil_Gomm
Lewis Punton
“I struggled to find a way into the latest Kick-About prompt, Alberto Giacometti isn’t an artist I’m familiar with but the sense of scale apparent in those towering sculptures did appeal to me. I had plans to create something involving tree trunks or roots to mimic that same slender aesthetic, but what started as a 10 minute study to get the ball rolling quickly became a painting I decided needed chipping away at all day – enjoy!”
Next time, we enjoy to a meeting of shapes, colour, rhythm, and movement — a reminder that even the simplest forms can have plenty of personality.
Red's Kingdom 
Leave a comment