It’s interesting how doing this MA has made me look back at the past. Recently I have been trying to find a stand point to my work, this should be easier said than done but within the last year it has changed so considerably it has left me questioning myself.
What has been consistent throughout is this idea of “sampling” cultures, art movements and artists. In the above article I mention sampling. In many ways it is as if I’m using a form of cultural and visual collating taking ideas from hear adding to there very much like a DJ does when sampling bits of music to make a new tune.
DJ Shadow talks about Sampling as Collage in this article from 2012 https://www.npr.org/2012/11/17/165145271/dj-shadow-on-sampling-as-a-collage-of-mistakes?t=1609688007498 . 25 years ago Shadow’s album “Entroducing ” was releasd on Mo Wax records, it was a groundbreaking trip hop masterpiece, sample heavy at the time it was like audio magic. Like many this album was glued to my turntable, I would listen and then spend time hunting down some of the samples, that’s how influential this album was. In the article Shadow describes it like a collage “I call it a collage. For people unfamiliar to sampling and its history and how it evolved, I think that’s the best way to explain it. It’s taking little pieces from here, adding it to little pieces from there — as many different disparate elements as you can find — and making something totally new out of it”
Music sampling is taking the familiar a snippet of music that is known and then building upon it to make the new or unfamiliar, I have some experience of this having dabbled in and out of the world of music making and production as well as DJing. This way of working is not unfamiliar to me but instead of playing with audio I am making and building upon the physical in that I am making sculptures that are formed out of bits of rubble and other found objects the objet trouve’ or the “urban organic”, as well as adding sculpted components and 3D printed pieces.
How these sculptures will progress I really do not know but i’m thinking about impressing items in to clay and then casting wax sheets from them that can be manipulated and sculpted much like how Paolozzi produced the models for his early bronze sculptures. Maybe instead of casting these models in bronze I will leave them as they are and see how the wax changes and distorts with time. For now this is just an idea.
The Art and musings of Jeffrey Knopf 