Paolozzi

Saturday we visited the Pallant House Gallery which was exhibiting works by Eduardo Paolozzi, it is well worth a visit. Paolozzi created a beautiful mural for the Tottenham Court Road Underground station. His work seems to be mainly influenced by the space era of the 1950's with mechanical shapes and collages of 1950's American advertising. Like many artists his work is not limited to just painting, textiles, and Wedgwood plates, film as well as sculpture. He experimented with wax casting, creating heads out of cast metal it was interesting to see the process unfold.

The poster prints are a riot of colour and mechanical shapes, that I found it a little busy there was so much to attract the eye, but it reflects the colour explosion of the 1950's so well - this was a time when vibrancy was an reaction to the deprivations of war time Britain.

The mechanical drawings and prints remind me of the Steam punk imagery that is a subculture of today, where steam and monster structures combine with robotic implants on humans. These have been recurring themes throughout the ages, right back to the luddites who saw machines replacing jobs.

It reminded me of a period of drawing I did a few years ago, when I discovered some old engineering stencils - I loved the technical aspect of drawing and used them to create an imaginary machine of my own. Sadly the original is lost, but this is a photocopy - the tones have been lost from the original pencil but it gives a flavour.

My two favourite objects from the exhibition was a gold porcelain piece - it had been cast from impressions and then made from porcelain which was then covered in gold. I think the structure would make the light reflections absolutely beautiful.

I really liked the gold version of the Wedgewood Plate, mostly because I can follow the pattern and texture more easily than the colourful version. 

The combination of blue tones and pattern is gorgeous, and very inspirational.  Well worth a visit if you can it is running until the 13th October 2013.