I was inspired to make this piece by the work of Tom Phillips; an artist who we had looked at earlier on in the topic. Tom Phillips is famous for his work 'a Humument'. In 'a Humument' Tom Phillips used a Victorian novel called 'a Human Document', he got rid of the 'an' from 'human' and 'doc' from 'document' to make the title 'a Humument'. On every page he created a piece of art by covering the page by using different methods to make an appealing effect, through collaging, painting and drawing. However, Tom Phillips would always leave some of the text showing through to make new sentences and words out of the old words from the original book.
Here are some examples of his work:
To get the idea of my final piece I thought of Tom Phillips, as I remember liking his work. I originally planned to use his technique on a few pages of a magazine, however I changed it to make it more unique. I
had a square piece of wood, and stuck various newspaper headlines onto the wood. Then I collaged on pictures of the headlines (like Tom Phillips did with the uncovered words showing through) with square pieces of old leaflets.
I also made a maquette (a small model of the planned end result; to give and idea of what the finished piece will be like. This gave me more confidence about my idea because it was more effective than I had expected it to have been; I wasn't sure whether the way I used small squares for the collaging would be effective.
Here is how I made my work in more detail:
- I got a square of wood, about 50cm x 50cm, then covered one face and the sides in newspaper by glueing it on.
- I looked through newspapers, looking for bold headlines I would be able to make an image through collaging from. I tried to keep some of the headlines related to recycling; for example one of the phrases was 'what are you throwing away?'.
- I stuck the headlines onto the wooden board.
- Next I cut up relevant colours from the old leaflets that I had.
- I collaged onto the wooden board images of the headlines; for example where I stuck on the word 'train' I collaged on a picture of an old-fashioned red steam train. I also linked some of the images together; I wrote 'what are you throwing away?' coming out of the train's funnel.
I originally planned to make some of the collage on the board 3D, however when it was on a vertical wall I figured that I couldn't properly connect the 3D part onto the board.
Overall, I was pleased with the end result, I was surprised at the resemblance between my own work and the work of Tom Phillips. If I could improve my work then I would have tried to make what the collaged images were meant to be, and perhaps some of the collage wasn't completely stuck down to perfection.
