For our final module we were kicked out of our nice cosy studio and taken 4 miles to here: Thwaites Mill. Site Specific Art is the idea..we have the option of working in a wooded area, a meadow-like grassy area, in the canal that surrounds the mill or in/with the mill itself. to me the mill stood out particularly with its industrial rough look naturally appealing to me.
after mill tours and hearing other people's ideas i was put off doing an idea about the mill..the history or something seriously reflecting the mill so i decided i wanted to draw people i aspired to large-scale upon the mill. i was drawn to people which the least connection to a watermill in leeds... musicians. here are some quick photoshop examples:
i wanted to use the roof (above) but its apparently very fragile and cant be used...so i had to look for another space...i considered and did several sketchbook drawings of stretching canvas across the mill of varying sizes. i was shown this space (below) right at the front of the mill.
after a crit where people were puzzled and not warming to my idea it managed to change to a more relevant image of celebrity..an advert... seeing as the space..if canvas was stretched over it...was similar to a billboard in size. The mill stopped creating its product (putty) in 1975. so i wanted to create an advert based on that that was pretty much the same as my original idea but with a tongue-in-cheek sarcastic ironic take on the mill. i wanted to put a really famous celebrity who would never do an advert for a mill and wasnt around/famous when the mill created the product in the first place.
hand drawn examples:
photoshopped axamples:
i needed a celebrity that was instantly recognisable and also i wanted someone too famous to be advertisin a mill in leeds. i wanted to highlight the worthlessness of "putty" this Horn's brand that was defunct in 1975 and make an ironic statement about it and whichever celebrity i chose. i chose Bono. Bono is the lead singer of U2 a world renound star who only does work for charity and thinks he rules the world. i wanted to brng him down to earth by having him endorse this putty.
i bought the canvas from richard at uni for £30 and cut it into 2 strips of 6m. i the ngot a guy from fashion to help me sew it together, creating my new 6mx4m canvas. it was huge.
i managed to loan some studio space in university to paint it. i hung it up and it was all looking a bit CHRISTO/JEAN CLAUDE haha.
then the difficult part was to secure it to the mill. i got 2 mill workers to help me, tied it using rope through about 16 eyelets in the canvas tied to the cast-iron fire escape and to a pole below the fire escape.
