Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Station 12

The second station I did (and I'm actually posting these in reverse order) was Station 12: Jesus dies on the cross.

I did this station once before, for the Cityside Stations of the Cross exhibition in 2003 (but with a different piece)... I always feel like this is kind of the climax of the story that the stations tell (seeing as the resurrection isn't part of the traditional stations) so there's probably a bit of pressure on this station from an art perspective. Anyway, I went pretty subtle.

The style of the image is actually one that I'm working on extensively at the moment, so I utilised it for this piece. Essentially the method involves taking a human form, reducing it to lines (sort of a schematics of the exterior of the human body) then 'exploding' it, dragging points and lines out from the schematics to describe the path of particles flying outwards from the body. It has something to do with showing that the body is fragile - made up of particles and bound together by whoknowswhat.

In the figure of Jesus, I hope it demonstrates that he is human, making a sacrifice, the creative energy of the universe (the breath of God) exiting as his life is given up. I also consider the particles to be a representation of humankind's sin that attached itself to him in the sacrifice.

The working method is digital but once it was printed out onto art paper, I wanted to do a non-digital intervention. The original concept was to use wine as my water colour pigment. In the event, it turns out that merlot dries to a kind of violet colour. Quite a nice colour actually, but not very indicative of blood. So I added a red water colour pigment to the wine - which gave me the final result.

I had hoped that the smell of wine would persist on the piece - and it certainly did while it was wet, but after it dried the smell mostly disappeared. So I put the piece behind glass in the end seeing as there wasn't much chance of the wine smell being obvious anyway. The wine is still there in the process though and I think that's important.

When the piece was set up for the stations, it was framed in a light wooden box frame and lit with a votive candle on either side (click to see the image a little larger).


2 comments:

Matt & Renee said...

in the words of the avalanche city hit single. love love love.

i am not sure if the blurb in the article was with the art at the station but either way i really dig what you did with the image.... its really top notch art Mr K.

the simplicity yet detail in the image along with implied meanings of the cross makes a bold and tasteful statement.. ... again love love love.

andrew killick said...

And again, chur chur. Every little bit of positive feedback puts a little (and sometimes a lot) of fuel in the tank. Really appreciate it.

No, the piece was blurbless in the station... there's always that thing with art about how much you should say or not say by way of explanation. I tend towards talking about the work (hence these blog posts... which I sometimes worry are too self-indulgent, especially seeing as so few people seem interested). But the worry with talking too much about a piece is that people won't bring their own thing to it - and you really do want people to bring their own thing to it as well.

I was especially pleased with this piece of the three I did for the event. It now hangs in our lounge.