The Street Art of Slinkachu

http://slinkachu.com/home

Recently, whilst browsing in Waterstones book shop, I found a book named “Little people in the City: The Street Art of Slinkachu” by an artist called Slinkachu.

Slinachu: Little People in the City book cover

This is Slinkachu's official site which contains information about the work which a combination of installation art and photography. I am currently making primary and platonic solids out of black cad in order to photograph them with small 1:100 or 1:50 models of people inside. The photographs will be done in black and white both on film and digital. There will possibly be a comparison between the two as a passing comment on photography.

Having looked at the Slinkachu little images and then in their broader context, there are similarities with what I am trying to achieve. The artists images show vulnerability in a big wide world which is reflected in human feelings about trying to make it in a huge city such as London. Hopefully, the images resulting from my own models will convey a sense of feeling within a space, i.e. within those natural and man made spaces.

slinkachu.com/little-people - click this link for more Slinkachu work which includes the close up shot and the equivalent wide shot.

The models of the platonic solids represent people inside shapes that occur in nature. The primary solid models represent people living inside shapes that occur in building. The primary solids are what Le Corbusier emphasised in his work and therefore are a good representation of him ad his idea that a machine is a house for living in. To me, the machine idea is something that has to be simple, i.e. it can be mass produced which was Le Corbusier's thinking behind it. Although this idea of a machine is more metaphorical, I have chosen to explore it in a literal sense which is fun but also comments upon the digital age i.e. bringing Le Corbusier's idea into the 21^st century in a way I am sure he must have thought about but we can never know how long he spent doing so.

I am also combining this with the photography technique of Bokeh and exploring these ideas in a 2D format. Photography is 2D showing 3D fomats and obviously the models are a physical 3D form which I am making myself. It was important to me from the moment I decided to explore “A house is a machine for living in” that there was a 3D element to the final project, even if this is something I have made and then photographed to portray the end result. There is something fascinating that links both architecture and photography. Both are very literal physical things. The camera shows the three dimensional world as it is but through a two dimensional image. This is also true of architecture. The buildings are three dimensional yet they are perceived as two dimensional on paper or computers before they are built.

There will be images to follow with progress on the model making and photography.