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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…
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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!
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I wanted to begin with these ‘behind-the-scenes’ photographs; a big glass fishbowl-like vase, a wooden spoon and loads of floating sequins. My mind’s eye kept showing me the special effects sequences from Disney’s unloved 1979 live-action film, The Black Hole, so I set about recreating something similar on my kitchen table for the The Kick-About…
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Our last Kick-About together was inspired by the orb-ish flesh and faces of Fernando Botero. This week it’s the mightier spheres and gas giants of the Hubble telescope’s mind-blowing photograph of the cosmos. Enjoy this latest showcase of new works made in a short time, and you can browse all previous editions of The Kick-About here. Vanessa…
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An old 35mm photo of Sidmouth Beach, unearthed from a forgotten stash of holiday snaps. Atmospheric, if a bit yellowish in places!
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These rather elliptical photographs are all I have to immortalise the installation I built for my MA show back in 1998. Somewhere, there is a short film too, called 17 Silks and a Stepladder, which documents the making of the installation, but I can’t find it. Maybe it will resurface one day, as these photographs have surfaced.…
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Some alternate images produced for this week’s Kick-About No.98, inspired originally by the inflated portraits of Fernando Botero. They began with high-resolution scans of a rubber mask and were then ‘put into three dimensional space’ in video editing software. I was loving the transformations, and in their disembodied, unheimlich way, they’re a fitting companion piece for this…
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Perhaps like many of us now, I have a collection of odd things left over from previous Kick-Abouts; for example, a latex mask of a rather stern-looking older man, last seen in these Harry Clarke-inspired photographs produced for The Kick-About No.91. It occurred to me I could use the rubbery deformations of this mask as the subject…
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Our previous Kick-About, on a theme of vanitas, got us contemplating the effects of time on our minds and bodies. Meanwhile, the portly subjects of Fernando Botero’s paintings are in rude health, inspiring this latest collection of ‘new works made in a short time’. For all previous editions of The Kick-About, visit here. James Randall “The voluminous…
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Back in early June 2023, we had the unusual experience of accommodating a BBC film crew in our very small Whitstable garden. The long-running BBC television show, Gardener’s World paid us a visit as part of a segment on seaside gardening and inclement weather conditions. Presenter Adam Frost plus camera man, sound man, continuity guy and director,…
Red's Kingdom 