NUA Year 3: BA3b

This unit is a continuance from BA3a, exploring themes of nostalgia based upon childhood memories from my own perspective. BA3b is a document of my journey and process on how I recreated objects from a childhood cartoon, Jackie Chan Adventures. This current project also opened up a discussion with myself in relation to how I view my identity. All the work that is produced in this unit will be towards my Gradfest piece.

I was initially inspired by artist Cornelia Parker as they took great inspiration from the childhood cartoon, Tom and Jerry. The violent actions that were portrayed on TV has been directly translated into Parker's works. I liked how this artist's catalyst for creating work centred around a popular cartoon show that majority knew from their childhood. I chose to recreate parts of Jackie Chan Adventures as it is one of my favourite childhood cartoons. I felt a connection with it from when I was young because the show is American-Chinese inspired. As I am adopted, I had limited Chinese influence of culture and my younger self wanted to resonate with the show.

There are three main parts to this project: The 12 Talismans and the main villain character 'Shendu' (head and body). Using the 3D Workshop, I replicated all 12 Talismans in the show by firstly handcrafting them in monster clay. Then creating a silicone mould for each of them, I was able to experiment with a couple different materials. My chosen and preferred material to impersonate the stone-like texture is jesmonite.
For Shendu, I split his statue form into two halves to tackle; his head and then the body. To construct the head I made an armature out of wire and wrapped chicken wire to structure the shape of the head. I covered it using the method papier-mache and spraypainted it.
The body of Shendu is to be made out of timber wood.