As part of the Pictoplasma Academy All Stars group show at the Urban Spree Gallery in Berlin, 2015, I was invited to exhibit two pieces of work which grew from my involvement in the 2014 Pictoplasma Character Academy.
This exhibition opportunity was initiated through my acceptance into and subsequent attendance of the Pictoplasma Academy, in October 2014, which was an 8-day master class, consisting of lectures, workshops and panel discussions, aiming to enhance the participant’s artistic and professional skills centered on the creation of character art.
Academy attendees are then required to initiate the development of a body of work to be showcased at the international Pictoplasma Character Festival and Conference the following year.
My work is response to what I perceive as a cultivation of veneration within historical collections of artefacts and how reverence is cultivated through these objects. Though my interests in museum artefacts, I have looked into how collected objects, often of humble origin, can attain religious like adoration though cultural storytelling and how this I can apply this idea to my own creative process within a framework of the contemporary character pop surreal culture.
This initial body of work explored ideas of veneration within artefacts. The sculptural piece,in the form of a Reliquary, is dedicated to the ideals of creative exploration using the central character of an anthropomorphic sacred heart which encompasses reflections of contemporary characterised popular culture, incorporating characters that invoke anthropomorphised creatures from the pop surreal landscape and which evoke a sense of creative passion and drive within artistry and creative flow. The painting reinforces the expression of venerated characters though the continued development of the sacred artefact through depicted icons and further characterisations.
