Bringing street sculpture to life

Street Sculpture, Newport

Inspired by the still life joiners I decided to have a go at something a little more interesting than a basic chair, but here again comes the message that simple works better with joiners.

In this joiner, Hockney  explores how to ‘see’ a chair from different angles at the same time. He compresses time and space into a two-dimensional image, but still evokes that Cubist sense of being able to experience it in almost three dimensions. (see Georges Braque’s Violin and Candlestick, 1910 below)

Hockney’ chair is a captivating image, but I thought it a little simplistic as a subject and wanting to explore some of the art that’s in my locality figured perhaps that I could add more in terms of content.

What I wanted to achieve was a sense of being able to see and experience not only views around the sculpture, but also in detail in places. It didn’t quite work that way mainly because there was just too much to take in; not only did I attempt to bring out the detail of the face, but also the outstretched hand and also try to capture the wider surroundings that the whole sculpture related to.

At first I attempted to make a composition from what emerged as two separate views of the sculpture. I wanted the viewer to be able to see it as a whole and as a three dimensional experience. It doesn’t work that well as I couldn’t find a way to bring the two together; there was no link, no point of reference that I could use to join them. So I now treat them as two separate joiners.

Here’s the first: 

This is one is the more successful of the two as it gives the viewer that sense of seeing around the object. I think that I could have removed a few of the frames so that there’s less to process, but I think that the number of frames I chose to use lends a dynamic feel to the joiner. It almost feels like I added motion to a still object and I quite like that idea.

The second joiner has something of a panoramic effect to it and I can see that there’s a fine line between a joiner and a panoramic picture. The joiner has so much more than a wide angle view – it has that ability to record not just the scene of an event, it captures the passing of time and therefore can record the event itself.