Adding the final pieces to Lost Connections triptych

Been adding more collage pieces today at The Project Space. I enlisted the help of 42 GCSE Art & Design students from Bassaleg School over 2 days. Students had never worked with an artist before, so were really looking forward to it and so was I, although it felt risky. 

I needed to explain what I wanted to say in the artwork, how they could help and where my ideas came from. I gave a talk about it in school. No-one had heard about e-waste and the planned obsolescence of our digital gadgets, or about the children working on the dumps, burning plastic casings from old computer monitors and phones to try and earn a living, breathing up the fumes in the process.

For 'Lost Connections' it would be an experiment. How would I be certain that the outcomes would be suitable? 

How would I give up elements of creative control so that students would have ownership and feel like they'd achieved something? So many uncertainties. It wasn't until I started to make the final paintings that it became clear.

Careful planning. I tried out different materials before going into school. I had a go at mould making with clay (too heavy) and resin casting (troublesome) I thought about 3D printing, but decided against adding to landfill making useless pieces of undegradable plastic. Using actual e-waste pieces sounded possible, but they'd have to be the right weight and size. Was the work large enough to take the weight of these pieces? Maybe not. 

Instead, I remembered a technique that my friend Andy showed me earlier in the year. It was an amazing metallic look using foil tape and black paint. I could try it here by making cardboard templates from empty pizza boxes and cereal packets, making templates of all the digital gadgets, then turn them into aged, broken looking objects.

I started by photographing pieces of broken phones, laptops etc that Wastesavers had donated for my project. I laid them on the floor of my studio then photographed them in perspective, at different angles, held in one hand. I took them into Photoshop and copied several varying sizes of them. I played around with the perspective filter, but sometimes it didn't look right. 

Over 2 days I made templates, approximately 50 pieces. Some of the phones were made out of 6 individual pieces which had to be labelled, colour coded and put into plastic freezer bags so that they didn't get lost. My kitchen looked like a disaster zone. I tried it all out by laying my finished collages on the floor and on top of the canvas. This might work!

Students could make their own designs based on the templates if they wanted and also do their own thing. They were also anxious that theirs wouldn't be 'good enough'. Some entered into competition with each other to see who could make the most stuff. They needn't have worried about 'not being good enough' their collages were great! Others had to be reminded of the 'bigger picture' - the goals ahead, then they remained on task. 

We also tried modelling the phones using a brilliant textile product called 'Paverpol.' The underside (negatives) of the moulds had better detail than the usual positive side.

Check the link to see that we made it into the local paper
http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/11556854.Electronic_waste_transformed_into_art/?ref=rss

Here's the link for Paverpol:
http://www.paverpol-uk.co.uk

Check out the amazing work that Andy O'Rourke and Gawaine Webber do: www.malarkyarts.co.uk