The Original Multiple.

For this project I was given Sir Eduardo Paolozzi’s “Bash" as a starting point. I found out that Paolozzi was a founder of the Independent Group, a group ofof painters, sculptors, architects, writers and critics who wanted to challenge prevailing modernist approaches to culture. I decided I wanted to create a response to popular culture today and create a illustrated collage inspired by the aesthetics of 'Bash".

I began by experimenting with backgrounds, inspired by the references to technology in 'Bash' I started to create a circuit board pattern.

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From here I began to experiment with different layouts. I decided on a boarder of a iPhone as it is the source of popular culture today. The circuit board pattern emphasises this. I incorporated bold shapes to break the background up and played with the idea of sections like in 'Bash'. I added spirals to suggest the act of hypnotising, as this generation is controlled by their phones.

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I then went on to do some practice collages with real images. This was to gage what I wanted to include and how it could look.

Once I had decided on what icons I was going to use I then began to illustrate them. I had chosen a model, musicians, an actress, a politician and TV characters that had all featured heavily in the media this year.

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After I had all my images I could start to play with composition. I started by trying to mimic the seemingly randomness of 'Bash' but then after moving things around I settled on a more simple way of merging the images together that allowed them to work as one image

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Once I had decided on what my final images were going to look like I started to screen print my backgrounds. I chose screen printing as it was the process used to create "Bash" and each print became and original as well as a multiple. After the backgrounds were screen printed I tried different ways of applying the illustrations, some were individually stuck on on different types of paper and some were printed out as a whole image. I created around 30 images, each a slightly different version of the original.

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Overall I was really pleased with what I accomplished and received positive feedback. It is a project I would like to push further and create a whole series of work based on popular culture through the years.