Word and Image

Having listened to the word and image talk and seen the presentation my initial thoughts were directed towards doing an installation, something that I had been wary of doing on my own in the past, as this was a group project I think it gave me the confidence to branch out into an area of illustration that hadn’t really crossed my mind before. After finding out which artist and music genre we had and finding out who was in my group we came to the conclusion of going ahead with an installation as we all felt it would be an interesting approach.

In the presentation I saw a few installations which interested me and gave me some ideas that I could take in my own direction. Initially I thought of Hannah Bays’ work with Gibson guitars. She had created a large scale guitar in a montage style and had a rustic look to it. Because we had been given Bob Marley to look at I took it upon myself to start looking into applying my already established collage work to a guitar design. My job in the group was to look at the religious side to Bob Marley’s music. Therefore I had created a collage which focussed on the Rastafari religion and Haile Selassie, who rastas believe to be the second coming of Jesus. I think the guitar is successful and fits in well with the rest of the installation and adds to it rather that hinders the overall look of the work.

As a group we looked at Tinhead’s work in which the artist presents his work in frames as a collection which I think works really well. I feel that the group has taken certain aspects from inspirational pieces of work and brought it together with our own individual outlooks and styles to create something original.

I’ve done alot of research into the Rastafari religion and feel that I have a good understanding of it and after listening to alot of Bob Marley’s music I realised that he refers to his religion in most of his songs and the movement of Jah people from Babylon to Zion, I made this the theme of my work. I was really interested by Michael Johansson’s sculptures, he collects various trinkets and related items and brings them together to make something new with a vintage feel so I constantly had his work in the back of my mind when working.

I knew that other people in my group were coming up with very clever and effective contemporary fonts and typography so I wanted to juxtapose that with classic looking fonts and give them a rustic feel because that’s the direction I felt the project should be going in but I think I’ve done it in a way that integrates the others more modern approach. This combination makes the installation original I believe although it may need an aquired taste.
I found Jason Holley’s approach to word and image very helpful in this respect, he uses very old fashioned, basic fonts and combines them with contemporary illustration techniques.

I wanted my work to look hand rendered and not polished and slick. For one of my final pieces I have handwritten lyrics onto a page and then scanned it in. The words themselves then make up the word ‘Exodus’. To inform this work I studied Alize Meurisse who integrates handwritten words into her illustrations in a very poetic way and the words often overlap onto sketches or paintings, this played a big part in the outcome of my work.

Overall I feel we have worked well as a group and all our visions and ideas seem to have come together without too many problems, the installation has a very definite style and look to it although it displays four very different artists at the same time, I believe this adds to its charm and contrasting aesthetic.