Priley Riley, The Ultimate Edible Masterpiece of 2015, October 2015

Last month I entered The Ultimate Edible Masterpiece of 2015, a competition run by the Art Fund. The idea was to re-create a famous work of art using food to raise money for galleries and museums. I chose to make and enter a satsuma version of Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam (shown in the photo above). I was really happy to receive a phone call from the Art Fund, on the 13^th of October, to say that this had been chosen as the winning entry by judges Frances Quinn (Great British Bake Off winner); Rowley Leigh (chef, restaurateur and journalist); and Jonathan Jones (The Guardian's art critic). I’ve added some links below to some wonderful articles on the Art Fund competition so far:

The Art Fund:

http://www.artfund.org/news/2015/10/14/the-ultimate-edible-masterpiece-of-2015-is-announced

The BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/18RSPZV83Zk4kQrqy9V0htb/a-peel-ing-creation-wins-edible-masterpieces

The Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/oct/15/edible-masterpieces-great-british-bake-off-art-food

Priley Riley, Update on The Child Sculpture, September 2015

The Child Sculpture was sadly recently vandalised. The book was found cracked around the hands, suggesting someone had tried to get the book out of them. I have therefore spent the last couple of weeks fixing this. I finished work on it today, so The Child Sculpture will be back outside Carillon Court Shopping Centre once the lacquer sealing the paint has properly dried. As the photo shows, the book is much thicker (and stronger) now. Over the last couple of months I have also been working on my dissertation for the next academic year. It is currently 5000 words long and is based on artist self-publishing, as I am interested in self-publishing a book revealing how The Child Sculpture was made.

Priley Riley, The Child Sculpture, January- July 2015

Shortly after my last post I applied for a commission from Charnwood Borough Council and Quadron to make a public sculpture. This sculpture would celebrate Ladybird Books, which were founded in Loughborough 100 years ago! This commission, sponsored by Serco, was an opportunity available to one Fine Art student at Loughborough University and I was delighted that my proposal was successful in gaining this commission.

My proposed idea was to create a life-size sculpture of a 4 year old child reading a book. I started making the sculpture in January, when I first used a couple of photos of my fiancé aged 4 to study the proportions of a 4 year old. I then constructed an armature (which is like a wire skeleton) and this supported the weight of the child that I then modelled around the armature using clay. Once I was happy with the clay child, I began the casting process, which was a long and quite complex process! I cast the clay child in plaster, making a multi-part plaster waste mould. I then used the plaster moulds to cast resin into and pieced all of the sections back together, resulting in the resin child. Car body filler was then used to make surface corrections before the sculpture was sprayed with primer, allowing me to then paint the sculpture. I used acrylic paint for this and sealed the paint with clear lacquer.

On the 15th of July 2015 the work, which I called ‘The Child Sculpture’, was then set up outside Loughborough’s Carillon Court Shopping Centre- this is the same site where the first Ladybird Books were printed and published. The following day the sculpture was judged as part of Loughborough’s entry in Britain in Bloom. Since this The Child Sculpture has been in 5 different newspapers (the Loughborough Echo, Leicester Mercury, Crawley News, West Sussex County Times and the Crawley and Horley Observer), on different websites, and I was interviewed by BBC Radio Leicester, which was on the radio on the 28th of July 2015. The Child Sculpture is also expected to be in this month’s Loughborough Community Eye magazine.

It is incredible to see the reactions of the public towards The Child Sculpture, so I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Serco, Charnwood Borough Council, Quadron, Loughborough University, and Peter Beacham- one of the technical tutors at the university- for the opportunity and support.

The photos above show the sculpture when it was in clay, the completed sculpture, and me beside The Child Sculpture.