8/05/2018 - BETH COLLAB FINAL INSTALL

On the Tuesday night the weather was favourable so I went out to paste my works. I had my favourite test location on my mind as someone had spilled blue paint everywhere up one wall days earlier, which I thought could make the perfect backdrop for my lion. This nearby location also allowed me to easily and regularly monitor test pieces such as these and check back repeatedly to see which areas weathered first and how long they survived.

I pasted the shark first, against a patch of wall with a sprayed swirl of a similar red tone. I was glad I had removed the background, as it allowed the artwork to enmesh with the unique canvas of the wall and emphasise the qualities of both. It did however mean that in some areas there were quite a few layers of tissue which had all been glued and then stuck together and dried for quite a long while. Because of this, it didn't bond to the wall surface very easily, and required lots of stippling to force it to grip into the lumps and bumps.

Once it was up however, having the additional layers left behind from the late backgound enhanced the graphic qualities of the work, making it really stick out. Removal of the background also emphasised the red triangles, making the artwork seem more like a sign or alert.

Next I pasted the lion, a much bigger job. However the advantage of working with lots of layers of tissue was that it strengthened the material, making the process much more hardy than my initial experiment with the single layer black orca silhoutte I first experimented with all those months ago.

It is always difficult to photograph a wet pasteup, however already seeing the work laying completely flat against the wall got me excited to see it the next day. The multiple layers of tissue were entirely flattened and became like layers in a stencil. Their translucency blending the bottom of the mane into the spilled blue paint quite effectively.

The background circles altogether near disappeared, however I knew they would retun when dried. That was another thing I was finding exciting about this process too; not being able to truly see the results until daylight the next day.