Anthony Heywood creates sculptures highly influenced by historical art and contemporary cultural and political events. Often using found materials and ready-made items to construct his art works. Taking inspiration from current issues, such as news events. The scale of his works draw emphasis on the issues and affects the area they’re displayed in. However, Heywood admits that little thought is put into the locations of the sculptures, but the settings amplify the works. The main aspect that drew me towards this sculpture was the use of up-cycling, as it relates directly to what I am interested in.
Heywood is passionate about converting trash into art, through assemblage and sculpture. The ‘Four Horses of the Apocalypse’ is a large sculptural piece involving four horses made out of collected objects, left to decompose and rot. The aim of the piece was to highlight the amount of items we throw away without thought, . The use of an animal as the subject highlights the damage we are doing to our planet. When viewing this piece, I thought of the founder of ‘ready-made’ art, Marcel Duchamp. Who is one of Heywood’s influences.
The idea of displaying found materials and discarded objects in the environment in which they were found or in many cases will end up intrigued me. Turning rubbish into art to inform viewers is all well and good, but the bigger and more shocking displays will have a harsher effect. In order to gain peoples attention on a subject matter, you have to shock them but also draw them in. Which is what this work does. The romanticised subject of horses draws the spectator in and once they realise the objects used to create them they become shocked. This idea of an artwork being beautiful yet disgusted is an important aspect of my own work.
Jasmine Donaldson Art 