Giant Guitar Sculpture

Also known as the 'phalic symbol', I built this sculpture in order to salvage my flailing grades at A-Level Design and A-Level Art. The year was 1993 and I was faced with either failing both A-Levels or salvaging one. I chose to save the latter and spent the next few months working flat out to complete this idea.

Essentially an inverted perspective. Why I chose the guitar coming out of a huge record was perhaps an unconscious idea. I was passionate about rock music at the time, Nirvana had just released their second album Nevermind and as a guitarist, my mind was being opened to the possibilities of Grunge music. 

I was also influenced a little by Salvador Dali's crazy melting clocks and what not and perhaps that idea proliferated into the inversion you see here. For if one was to look from above, the perspective seems real but on the level, the idea is pure illusion. Much like the illusion that one can succeed in the music industry. Yet like the band Nirvana had to contend with, there is the endless constraints imposed upon musicians by their record labels to shift x-amount of radio friendly twaddle. 

 Card Concept Model

It is a sore fate for any artist who has the dream of making it big in the music industry. A contributory aspect of why Kurt Cobain died. Less we never forget that there is freedom in live unconstrained music, with the potential to smash corporatism,  hence the guitar sculpture bursting thru a giant record.

 Floor Plans 

As with anything I build, I start with a floor plan on paper and work my up from there. 

Basic components, corrugated cardboard 

 The only way is up : Me with sculpture - first assembly of components 

At this point I was toying around with the idea of making the sculture horizontal, that is fixing the whole thing to a wall, so that it would project out horizontal as opposed to its vertical orientation, in order to get the perspective thing to work but with time and materials running short, I had no option but to reach for the heavens.

 Tuning Peg: card board, news paper and Pot noodles

 Machine Heads, three sizes sculpted in clay and reproduced in vacuum formed plastic.

Record label

This was enlarged from an actual Sire Record label, using a photocopy machine and then stuck together in sections of A-4 before being painted. A layer of PVA glue was then added to give the sheen. In the days before computers and photoshop, I had to do most of these sort of graphics by hand. It was then mounted onto a large cardboard black disc, some two or three meters in diameter, with concentric grooves scored into it (using an old black board compass) to give the illusion of a giant vinyl record...

 Final Assembly - ready for exhibition. 

The entire sculpture was supported by a wooden frame on  a car tire to add more height and essentially anchor it to the floor.Once it was complete and the envigilators had ticked all their boxes, I then had it dismanteld, strapped  to the roof of a mini bus and took it to the Portsmouth Museum where it was reconstructed for a brief exhibition. Then it was a case of lack of storage, thus fate bestowed its returning  back to the college, where over subsequent months, its huge sections cluttered various hallways, mulled over occasionally by the odd student before being thrown in the rubbish skip altogether...

New World Order

 

A little fun with a leaflet put through my door. The original text was 'Life in a peaceful new world' but I couldn’t resist adding the word 'Order' to it and the radioactive CCTV towers. Everyone is bar coded also...

 

Jehovah witnesses are notorious for presenting such depictions of a perfect world in leaflets such as the one above (minus the cameras of course) but surely religion is merely a moral guide to follow, anything more, is asking for trouble. For example, who told George W Bush to invade Iraq?

Foucault's Panopicon 

In London, surveillance is the norm. As a general rule, most of us are caught on CCTV cameras roughly 300 times a day. Writer Michel Foucault highlighted the use of panopticon surveillance, fearing society's greatest danger was not being oppressed by such a system but becoming carefully fabricated within it (Foucault,1977). 

In this respect, religion and Big Brother walk hand in hand, both relying heavily on the roles of duality, to enforce their own forms of indoctrination. In such belief systems, the advocators are defined by their duality. For Good is perpetually set against evil. Democrats hate repulicans, capitalists hate communists, Portsmouth Football club hates Southampton and so on. God and CCTV are almost one and the same, constantly watching over us from the heavens above. Thus with God, we must fear the devil and when it comes to Big Brother, we must fear terrorism, so much so that duality is formed against any opinion that opposes the status quo.  

Writer John Edward McGrath suggested that, not only was society unable to avoid the rising tide of CCTV ala Big Brother, but it had in fact simply embraced it. (McGrath 2004) And in the wake of recent events regarding numerous terrorist attacks, I find this point  particularly disturbing.

Of course, any terrorist attack is an appalling act, which cannot be condoned but is the threat of terrorism so great that we must be constantly at the whim of popular opinion regarding such phrases as 'national security', insurgency or Al Qaeda ? 

Perhaps the media is at fault for suggesting Al Qaeda is a global terrorist organisation. This is simply not the case. If anything, the term itself refers to the base of a pillar, the foundation of a structure. The term was then popularised by the media to mean something totally absured. Thus to the average person, it simply means the roles of duality are clearly defined in terms of us vs. them. 

To put it quite simply. Have you ever met a terrorist ? What exactly is a terrorist? Who is to say what a terrorist looks like beyond some preconception based on a loose reference supplied by some hokey spin ?

In the good old days a terrorist was usually anyone beyond the borders of the British Isles, and unfortunately,  this usually meant you had to be Islamic. After spending my weekend camping in Lock Ness during 911, I distinctly remember the apprehension I felt when two young men boarded our return coach, both dark skinned, beards and of course donning turbans, followed by a wave of anxious murmurs from my fellow passengers.

These prejudices were due to my own ill informed views of the world, when I believed whatever spin was spun.  Nowadays, it seems that almost anyone is a potential terrorist. 

A point the Guardian is even saying :

 The Guardian on face book - Thursday 5 April 2012

If one is to accept the illogic rhetoric rammed down our throats by the U.S. Government agencies, then we must already be surrounded by potential Terrorist threats from all sides. This would mean an insane world indeed...

 Terrorists Everywhere! My interpretation of western paranoia

Where the Indian woman running the corner shop, holds an AK-47 under her counter, where the Asian milkman, the postman and even the Jehovah witnesses are in on it, all patiently waiting for a sign from Allah. All waiting for the day when they will coordinate their efforts using facebook, Msn, My Space, Meet-up or twitter before blasting us brits all dead at the breakfast table, somewhere between Loose Woman and Jeremy Kyle.

If this is the case, one must constantly avoid men with beards, avoid suspicious looking people gathered in groups, avoid going out at all costs and stay tuned to the television set for instructions. Talk to no-one beyond these instructions and inform on those who question such instructions. Follow these guidelines and one is sure to be safe. Waver from them and one might endure fear and ridicule...
And whats more, if the Government says it is putting fluoride in your water whether you like it or not then I'm sure its for the best, maybe...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1356208/Judge-gives-ahead-add-fluoride-Southamptons-tap-water.html

On the other hand, our future may not be so far from the above New World Order Pamplet, its citizens spaced out on drugs pumped into our water supplies, numbing our wills to the piont where we obey everything that the state tells us without question, while television and the media takes care of the rest.

So like the child in The Emperors New Clothes, we must look to our young to point out the obvious, that we have been conned into a rhetoric (terrorism) that simply does not exist, for we are surrounded (not by terrorists) but by ourselves, blundering about this world in fear, disconnected from it, separated from each other by the commodities we are forced into buying daily and the monetary system which perpetuates it... 

 

References :

Loving Big Brother: Performance, Privacy and Surveillance Space, (2004)  McGrath, John Edward, (Routledge)