Francis Alÿs

Francis Alÿs was born in Belgium in 1959. He studied architectural history at the Institute of Architecture in Tournai and engineering in Venice before relocating to Mexico city in 1986 originally arriving as part of a French assistance program after an earthquake. This is where he now lives and works as a practicing artist.

His work mainly involves looking at the cultural and economic conditions of particular places, usually conceived during walks of urban areas. He is widely known for his documentary style projects addressing economic and social injustice in Latin America.

However his drawings on tracing paper is what has influenced my artwork.

Fill up my cup

Fill up my cup, 2013, video.

Sculpture Project: Light and Made

In sculpture we were given a list of words to use to create a piece of work from. I chose the words light and made. In the previous session we were asked to bring in our favourite objects, to draw from them and create sculptures from them. I decided to continue on from this and create something based on my favourite object, a mug, featuring aspects of the words light and made.

I wanted to physically make something using my hands out of a light material. At first I tried to create a set of paper-mache mugs however when I attempted this my paper-mache creation just stuck to the mug. To overcome this obstacle I changed my approach and used plaster bandages on the inside of the mug which I covered in clingfilm. Mounting these cups made from plaster bandages on my wall I thought they were a bit plain so inspired by my object I placed teabags within them creating more interest in the piece.

Anyone for a cup of tea? 2013, plaster bandages and teabags.

Then we were asked to develop this piece. I found it amusing that my sculpture was based on an object that could hold liquid however my sculpture could not, so I explored that idea. My first idea was to create a tea set from plaster however it became apparent from 'Spoon' that it was impractical due to the amount of clay to produce a mold of a mug and removing said object from the clay.

Spoon, 2013, plaster mold of a spoon.

Then I contemplated how I can adjust a mug so that it can't hold liquid and I arrived at the conclusion to simply smash them and glue them back together in more interesting ways; thus creating, my drinking cup I and II.

My drinking cup, 2013, broken china and glue.

My drinking cup II, 2013, broken china and glue.

However I judged my work as being too plain so I added colour to my project by breaking mugs of different colours and glueing them together mismatched. I also created a video to emphasise how useless these mugs are called, Fill up my cup.

What a smashing cup of tea, 2013, broken china and glue.

Journey Project

My Journey route involved walking to where my friends are. However whilst drawing my journey I found that my drawings were more interesting if I kept walking whist drawing. This gave my work momentum. Then I had the idea of letting my hand go free and just draw the motion of my walking. I explored this using different colours to reflect my mood on my journey, for example red for angry. Furthermore I experimented by drawing on top of photographs of my journey. However I found that filling the page with my journey in just plain black really emphasized that my work was about the movement.

My drinking cup II

My drinking cup II, 2013, broken china and glue.

What a smashing cup of tea

What a smashing cup of tea, 2013, broken china and glue

Spoon

Spoon, 2013, Mold of spoon in plaster.