• Sugar Paper #2 (2024)

    Sugar Paper #2 (2024)

    Another set of alternates produced for this week’s Mainie Jellett-inspired Kick-About. I wasn’t consciously going for Pac-Man at the time, but once seen…

    Read more

  • Sugar Paper #1 (2024)

    Sugar Paper #1 (2024)

    These digital collages began as physical collages of torn sugar paper to produce textures from which I could cookie-cut other shapes. I wanted to emulate some of the painterly surfaces of Mainie Jellett’s paintings (prompt for The Kick-About No.101) but also some of the formality of her layered shapes. I then went about sub-dividing the…

    Read more

  • The Kick-About #101 ‘Mainie Jellett’

    Our last Kick-About celebrated our 100th prompt, with new works made in a short time on a theme of that auspicious round number. That’s a lot of new-things-tried and experimentation – much like Mainie Jellett’s exploration of abstraction, which broke away from conventional artistic norms. Phil Cooper “I love the Kick-About for many reasons, it…

    Read more

  • Hecatoncheires (2024)

    Hecatoncheires (2024)

    This is a Kick-About #100 bonus feature… As part of my recent KA-inspired transformation into the rather mournful figure of Le Mille-Pattes Humain, I had to create a head-piece out of an existing mask I’d made for The Kick-About No.47 and a whole load of latex rubber gloves. After the photoshoot, the disembodied head reminded…

    Read more

  • Le Mille-Pattes Humain – Portraits (2024)

    This week’s Kick-About was a celebration; our 100th edition, which means 100 creative prompts and 100 ‘new works made in a short time’. For my offering, I began with ‘100 latex gloves’ and ended up playing a strange game of ‘dress-up’, inspired in part by Angela Carter’s Nights At The Circus, by Tod Browning’s Freaks…

    Read more

  • Le Mille-Pattes Humain (2024)

    So let me tell you how all of this started… It began with me researching the Hecatoncheires – the hundred-handed giants of Greek mythology. Then, in classic Kick-About style, I leapt at once to acquiring a box of 100 latex gloves. That done, I got thinking about other hundred-limbed things, and arrived at centipedes, and probably because…

    Read more

  • The Kick-About #100 ‘Centum’

    Our last Kick-About was a fantasia on some pretty big numbers; for example, the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field photograph’s million seconds of exposure reveal about 5500 galaxies! We’re celebrating a biggish number too this week – our 100th edition of The Kick-About! Congratulations to everyone who has participated in this fortnightly skirmish. It is one thing…

    Read more

  • Throwback Friday #169 ‘No.34’ (2004)

    I can take no credit for the odd, dreamlike quality of these two photographs. You’re looking at light bleeds and lots of airborne dust. That said, they capture this moment well, which saw me living in the attic of my late grandmother’s house while I gave the whole place a make-over in advance of the…

    Read more

  • Throwback Friday #168 ‘Spiderwoman’ (1999)

    Back when I did my Foundation in Art and Design at the Amersham and Wycombe College in 1993, my final project was, on reflection, a fanboy’s love letter to the science-fiction Alien franchise and a manifestation of my then-ambition to work in the movies.  This ‘Black Widow’ encompassed a whole bunch of making techniques, everything…

    Read more

  • Event Horizon #2 (2024)

    Event Horizon #2 (2024)

    A second set of science-fiction-inspired photographs produced using a fishbowl, sequins and a wooden spoon, produced for The Kick-About No.99. Cut-price special effects!

    Read more

Archive