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...