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.
From within a fascination with the physicalities and defences of the beast, Thunderbones forges between the ‘exterior’ and ‘interior’, to create a spatial escapism, by distorting weight and placement on the body.
Concerned with exaggerating and defining the body, silhouettes distort innate judgements of perimeter and logical weight. Blurring the boundaries of the body.
Thunderbones represents a roaring wildness strapped in by mortal truth that inverts the rational composition of balance, scale and perception.
Shaped by a pastiche of hairy, wide eyed, collaged beasts, skeletal assortments and the visceral textures of animals Thunderbones draws influence from exaggerated forms, and the elaborate intersections of anatomy .
Skin, hair, teeth, claws and eyes all resonate the weight of the beast. The idea of ‘the beast’ in a kind of tortured duality of fear and power, hiding behind defensive mechanisms provokes a vivid wildness.
Thunderbones opens a tug-o-war between taming and wildness. Questioning defensive visual weighting, wildness vs naivety and the beastly wide eyed survivalist tension that revels in duality.
Through research and exploration of the dimensions of a body tamed and untamed, outcomes expand upon form – juxtaposing inflated and untamed scale with domesticated and defined interludes to the body's ‘true perimeter ’.
A sense of heavy processing is pronounced through more industrial methodologies of moulding plastics, metal hardware and etched leathers. Through utilising technology a collaborative processes between man, material and machine has allowed designs to become driven by response, created both practically and mechanically.
Seeking three dimensional appropriations of beastly elements non conventional materials and technologies have provided a platform for sculpting the body.
Work deals with corporeal contradictions and beastly armor anchored by bone nets.
Works interact with the body, both positively expanding beyond to redefine borders building body mass, and negatively strapping into the body to manipulate form physically.
Exterior shapes become bound by exoskeletons to create weight conscious parameters.
An exterior perspective and spontaneous making allowed design to be driven by an instinctual ‘feel’ of the process and materials in unison, allowing the ‘doing’ to inspire imagination.
Design actions explore perceptions of the real and the imaginative nature of the beast and its transformative use of weight as a visual tactic.
In developing experimental wearables Thunderbones has grown expanded and changed in working towards creating layered body interfaces as a collaboration that simultaneously braces the body and projects it outward.
‘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.
