EDAM Term 2 : Exquisite Corpse

 The ' Exquisite Corpse" one-day project with Heidi Wigmore   started off by looking at the etchings of the Chapman Brothers  and talking about its roots in Dada/Surrealism. Heidi had run a   workshop  at the Ferens Gallery in Hull   in 2017  in response to  the Turner Prize  ( some of the results below), the collaborative nature of the  process yielding interesting results.  

We had 2 A1 sheets each folded in half  and joined together with masking tape to create a 60 x 170cm sheet   taped to  a large drawing board on an easel. We used  images from a 1970's colour supplement ' One Million Years of Art'  as the basis for our heads and bodies

We  started off  with the head - it could be a painting, sculpture, human or animal  but whatever we drew , it had to be done in charcoal as accurately as possible ( quite tricky  given the tiny size of the photos) . I started with this Greek head. We marked on the fold  guide lines  where the head finished then folded it over the back of the  drawing board   and passed the whole sheet of paper onto the next person . 

I neglected to take a photo of the initial stage of the head , the photo above is much later on after several processes  but you can see the basis of it . 

 For the 'body' section  I drew from an Indian manuscript, trying to capture the patterns on the cloth  and for the 'trunk to knees' , I chose a  Roman sculpture ( below) 

Then  for a bit of fun , the 'legs' came from a Chinese  ceramic horse! 

And then we received our original drawing back to work on further. I particularly liked the feather cape  that Lito had added  and that formed the basis of  my work.  

 Josie's  head with my torso 

Shabana's head with my ' trunk to knees' 

And my particular favourite , Nicola's donkey head  with my horse legs . It was a complete coincidence , I had no idea  what the starting point had been 

On receiving our  piece back,  we worked with charcoal, compressed charcoal and eraser and finally  with white acrylic using a dry brush 

Above is how Josie had worked on and improved by drawing and Shabana's final work is below. 

In between the use of compressed charcoal  and acrylic, we had to spray  the drawing to fix them using either the roof terrace or the small balcony off the student sitting area. This is Lito's ' Hanging around at City Lit!"