Triptych Relief "Oh! The places you'll go" - Final Degree piece

I am a recent graduate of the BA (hons) Technical Arts and Special Effects course at Wimbledon Art College, UAL. 

For my final major project, I created a triptych relief based on the poem “Oh! The places you’ll go” by Dr Seuss. 

My sculpture depicts mans’ voyage through life, his inner conflicts and the burden of choice and uncertainty.  It focuses in on his struggle with loneliness, juxtaposed against his instinctive longing for freedom, his dreams of success and fear of defeat.

I wanted to depict reality but more importantly convey drama and human emotion in a piece that will resonate with the audience in the same way that the poem does.

All components of the relief represent different elements of the poem.  The people in the scenes and their arrangement signify the different stages of life and states of mind.  These continue to be represented by the imagery created in the three main back-drops.

The 3d, stand alone, ‘strange birds’ sculpture which sits in front of the third panel, encapsulates the vulnerability of the lonely man, the hostility of isolation and struggle to escape it.  Visually the sculpture is a lone figure, on the edge of a cliff, harassed by three strange birds; he is in confrontation with what will “when you’re alone...scare you right out of your pants”.

I sculpted in predominantly in clay, polymer clay and wood, moulded in silicone, Jesmonite and plaster and cast in resin, with a finish to replicate Bronze. I developed new processes and employed established techniques, in order to mould and cast different objects with a range of materials.   

 

I was inspired by Paul Day's Battle of Britain Monument. I particularly liked the drawings of Charles Avery; they are full of action, the complex, chaotic scenes of Hieronymus Bosch and the freedom to be dramatic in graphic novels including work by Will Eisner and Jim Steranko.