First thing I decided to do was research the artist – find out the sort of materials he used, what his main subject of interest was and how he interpreted them in his work. I had to read into a lot of Marc’s work before I could fully understand his pieces. The more I read about Quinn, his perspective on life and its translation into his work the more I began to understand and admire the genius behind it all. Who else could compare something as mysterious and complex as the big bang to exploding popcorn?
This is one of my favourite pieces by Marc, it's called 'Self' which he made in 1991. It is a sculpture of his head made from 4.5 litres of his own blood and then frozen in ice. It took nearly a year to extract the blood safely from his body. The piece is stored in a specially made chilled unit and was eventually bought by the art collector Charles Saatchi for £13,000.
This is another of my favourite pieces by Marc, created more recently (2006) it is called 'Big Bang Pop' and is a sculpture based around the comparisons made from the second a popcorn seed explodes and the big bang theory of the universe. It was inspired by treating his young son to popcorn one night before they watched a film together. What a nice thought!
My initial idea was to create a coin or bank note to commemorate the English gardener using illustrations of the heads of 2 gardening friends for one side and a wheelbarrow as a symbol on the other with a famous quote relating to the wheelbarrow. As I began to realise this idea may not be as easy to present my workings developed into something new and for my final piece I have tried to create something like Marc’s work which is initially unobvious to the eye but with explanation will become apparent.
I started by making a plastic Perspex mould in the shape of a typical garden shed or storage unit. The Perspex mould will be clear as it is supposed to replicate ice water, a material Marc used for his ‘Self’ piece in 1991. I then took the wheelbarrow and stripped it down to its main frame, the piece that joins all the other parts together. I was left with a series of flowing lines that I reproduced using a computer programme to be printed on to green sticky vinyl. The contour lines were then placed over the model of the shed I had made.
The final piece is supposed to represent the wheelbarrow, holding and transporting an object to another place, in this case its own home – the garden shed or storage unit.
If I had to give my work a humorous ‘fine art’ title it would be called “She Thinks It Lifts Her Into A Mythical Level” - a comment Marc made after Kate Moss’ reaction to his latest work ‘Sphinx’.
