Display

I have been thinking of ways in which I could possible dispaly this peice for the end of year assessment show.
Depending on how many eggs i decide to use, and whether I use whole eggs, or the egg shell pieces, or both, I want to try and contain them in a small cage like structure, or something that is the size of the space one caged hen gets to live in. Very relevent sizing I think.
So I have to come up with how i will display these eggs in the space of less than an A4 sheet of paper. Exact measurments vary for the size of the space each bird has but on average its about 3/4 the size of A4.
So Im thinking wire base perhaps, as this is what they live on. Im not sure how the eggs will stay on this so perhaps a small shelf the same size to put the eggs on....

Golden Eggs

An alternative experiment to using jewels is to spray paint the egg shells gold..
This way i could produce elegant looking egg shells, but much quicker and on mass.

I have painted the egg shells as a whole, and also broken them up and painted them, so there are just fragments of golden egg shells.

(kind of reminds me of Jack and the Beanstalk - then hen who lays the golden eggs)

I think these would look good on mass production, as the eggs are produced for us. But Im not sure wether to paint just the outside or the inside also...

I think maybe combining the two ideas, of jewels and gold together could produce a nice, very royal effect. So next i think I will paint the inside of the eggs gold and then put jewels on top also.

More eggs shells...

So i finished another egg shells with the jelwels, although these are not two halfs of the same egg, which i should have made sure of. This was more of an experiment though so i will use a whole egg for the next one. I want to use two halfs of the same egg as then you will be able to see they can fit together, and perhaps I will fit them together to display them, so from the outside it looks like a normal egg with a crack one side, but with a closer look withing, sparkling jewels will be hiding...

Flying Kites in Glossop

I say flying, but for me it didnt really go that way...
I made my diamond kite from clear plastic, with a frame made from wire and sticks. And thats where it all went wrong...
I thought a diamond shape kite was a safe way to go and my stick frame re-inforces with wire and cable ties, how could it not fly... even just a little bit..?
It turns out that sticks don't hold up to well in a big gust of wind. As soon as I stepped off the coach in Manchester from Liverpool, before I even got on the coach to Glossop, it was broken.
I tried to mend it best I could with some wire I had in my bag and was hopeful it would hold.
When we got to Glossop we had some breakfast, and egg roll, and then headed up the kill to fly the kites.

Trying to be optimistic,Ii attempted to fly my little broken kite but it was no use.

My little failure of a kite...

So I whipped out my back up plan...
I wasnt going to fly a kite, I was going to kite a fly.
Result!.... kind of.

My fly on a string, blowing in the wind... (this fly died of natural causes)

Flying high above the hills...

Some more successful kites of the day.

A little diversion

After looking at Claire Morgan's works a little more closely at her use of objects such as dead flies and decaying fruit and plants, i had a quick go at taking some photos of my own dead flies and flowers.




I think I prefer the Black and White version, although in the colour photo the fly can be seen more clearly...

I kind of reminds me of the idea of death the skull brings in Vanitas paintings... maybe I could use this as a starting point to creat some kind of alternative Vanitas scene with unusual items such as the flies...

one down...

One egg shell finally finished, took quite a while to try to stick them all down without pulling them back up again! But I am quite happy with this.

Maybe many of these would look effective, or perhaps just one whole egg, in two halfs, decorated like this would look more 'special' and another contrast between the mass production of the eggs I am showing.

I also experimented making fabric flower to decorate the eggs shells with. It didnt really turn out how I had hoped and I wasnt very impressed. Im not sure if it was the type or colours of fabric, but I think it ended up looking more like an easter treat. So I think I iwll give this one a miss.

Egg Shells

So I dont have any taxidermy to use, and it looks like it could be quite difficult to get hold of without spending alot of time or money!
Ive had a go at using egg shells following my egg box idea from the Time Line exhibition.
Similar to Angela Singer I have tried using beads and jewels to line the inside of the egg shells in an attempt to portray a smiliar message about the cruelty to animals but particulally within the intensvie farming industry, starting with caged hens.
I think this is an industry very easily over-looked by the majority of the worlds population, only seeing what is on their plate and having no idea or now care as the where it was come from and the welfare of the animals that were used to porduce this for them.
So with this project i want to try and provoke some kind of concern for producion of eggs, and the contrast of the sparkling jewels will hopfully be recognised as an great contrast to the extremely grim conditions these chickens live in for the mass production of egss for humans.

I began using only red beads, but because they are all the same size they ended up in creating quite straight edged shapes, a bit too organised.

I got hold of some jewels and much prefered this effect, the different colours and sizes.