Lionel

I was asked to make a papier mache ape for this year's End of the Road Festival. I have made paper heads for the festival before as well as for school plays, but I was yet to make anything on a larger scale. It took me about two weeks to make and reminded me how much I enjoy using my hands and physically making things, an aspect of my art practice that has reduced since I started working from a more conceptual perspective. 

I found it a little challenging to work to someone else's brief without having much contact with them - I was communicating over email and didn't really want to ask too many small questions. It was tricky to decide what approach to take with the colourings and style of the ape - whether to make it very realistic or more vibrant and cartoonish, which I knew would suit the festival. I decided just to go with my instinct and use the colours I thought looked best. 

As I was repeatedly studying reference images of chimpanzees and carefully sculpting the facial features with paper, I began to observe the similarities/differences between peoples' faces and chimps'. In the same way that drawing makes you more observant and aware of small details, I started to look at people's faces with this increased analysis, thinking about the contours of the brow bone or the shape of the nostrils - imagining how it would need to be sculpted and arranged, what colours I would mix together to find the right skin tone. Sometimes when I'm bored, usually on a train, I decide to look at things in this way - ignoring what I know, what I've grown up being taught about the colours of objects, and consider what hues I am really seeing (e.g. yellow leaves, brown trees, white skies). Making the monkey, this started to happen involuntarily. 

Nb. My mum called him Lionel, I resisted but it stuck.