LoneWolf: 08.11

THUNDER BONES

Hope.Fear.Adventure

Inside all of us is a wild thing

A lucid and visually debaucherous mix of wild things and skeletal weights, Thunderbones projects a blatantly bizarre take on the ‘ins and outs’ of our beastly reality.

In the realm of weight, questions of heavy allude to tooth and claw, to bone and joint, to the fear and the excitement of the wild and to the structure and support of our skeletal base. Thunderbones is an inquiry into the borders of the body, proportion of its features and subverting the gravity of its composition.

‘The work is about the fluidity with which life fades in and out of the physical universe and what the infinite void surrounding it may look like. I like to think the stars are clearer there. I am also increasingly fascinated by the multitude of strange things that people gravitate towards when they think too hard about their own morality.’ Jesse Balmer

From within a fascination with the physicalities and defences of the beast, this design inquiry has chosen to forge between the ‘exterior’ and ‘interior’, to create some sort of spatial escapism, distorting weights and placement on the body in order to create a second skin.

This exploration seems the logical progression in furthering knowledge of ‘the heavy’ in relation to the body and its inherent beastliness, Thunderbones represents a roaring wildness strapped in by mortal truth that inverts the rational composition of balance, scale and perception.

Shaped by a kaleidoscopic pastiche of hairy, wide eyed, collaged beasts from Where the Wild Things Are, skeletal assortments from reality and the visceral textures and traits of animals Thunderbones

draws visual influence from enlarged costume and puppet forms, and the elaborate intersections of skeleton anatomy . Concerned with exaggerating and defining the body, silhouettes distort innate judgements of perimeter and logical weight.

Conceptually, the idea of hiding inside a large and beastly form, hiding inside a rigid skeleton cage, alludes to feelings of safety and solidarity, looking out from behind glorified fangs, a doppelganger of sorts, blurring the boundary of the body so as to release oneself from fear and judgement in favour of hope and adventure. Creating a mysterious and inflated presence, skin, hair, teeth, claws and eyes all resonate the weight of the beast.

The idea of ‘the beast’ has a kind of tortured duality of fear and power. It is this duality that makes the beast so ‘heavy’; the idea of hiding behind defensive mechanisms to protect our very bones provokes wildness. Thunderbones aims to open up a tug-o-war between taming and wildness, debasing the idea by bringing that which is so fiercely guarded to the outside, the very structure of being, that which holds our weight, in a exposition of structure in context with form .

From deep within a harsh shell comes the peering eyes of the vulnerable, Questioning the inherent inflation of the beast, defensive visual weighting ; hair raising, shoulders puffing, nose crinkling ... wildness comes with a kind of naivety , a wide eyed survivalist tension that revels in duality.

Through research and exploration of the dimensions of a body tamed and untamed, outcomes lean towards a position somewhere between costume and apparel. Seeking to expand upon form beyond an inflated and untamed scale, juxtaposed with domesticated and defined interludes to ‘true perimeter ’, experiments will delve into exaggerated duality addressing ‘the parts’ and ‘the whole’.

A sense of heavy processing will pronounce itself through more industrial methodologies of moulding plastics, cutting metals and etching leathers, the tactile weight of these materials visually will aid the emphasis of balance, similar to the costumes/puppets of Julie Taymor and the Soundsuits of Nick Cave.

Using creative escapism to step into a second skin, the work sits in a more conceptual context, alluding to contemporary life and the body as a safety net, the beast in which we can hide.

In dealing with corporeal contradictions and beastly armour anchored by bone nets, the work aims to highlight the paradoxical nature of the world and the tendency for our perceptions to become refracted in some sense by elements that come between us.

Sitting in a body sculpture/ art arena works will interact with the body to a point of symbiosis, both positively expanding beyond the body to redefine boarders building body mass, and negatively strapping into the body to manipulate form physically.

Through both literal and abstract juxtapositions of bodily realities, exterior shapes are bound by exoskeletons to create weight conscious parameters.

Using leather, fur, latex, metals, acrylics and digital printed fabrics to orchestrate a contrived balance on the body, the work will be created both practically and mechanically. Seeking three dimensional appropriations of elements such as scales armour and skeletons non conventional materials and technologies will provide a platform for sculpting the body.

Through developing experimental wearables the Thunderbones proposition will grow expand and change in working towards creating layered body interfaces.

Through thinking from an inside perspective looking out coupled with a sense of spontaneous making on the body, designs will be driven by an instinctual ‘feel’ of the process and materials in unison. Drawing from ideas of assemblage and layered consideration design actions with explore both concave and convex perceptions of the real and the imaginative nature of the beast and its transformative use of weight as a visual tactic.

Utilising the idea of wildness and its fragility ,Thunderbones works towards initiating a collaboration that will simultaneously brace the body and project it outward, whilst embracing ‘heaviness’ in all its duality.

Driven by natural and impulsive ways of making, prototypes and experiments will shape and feed design directions, coupled with the materials themselves ‘doing’ will inspire imagination. Through utilising accessible technologies a collaborative processes between man, material and machine will begin to define designs driven by response.

‘They roared their terrible roars, and gnashed their terrible teeth, and rolled their terrible eyes and showed there terrible claws… let the wild rumpus start’. Where The Wild Things Are.