Expressive Portraits Emerge from Items of Cardboard in Josh Gluckstein’s Wildlife Sculptures — Colossal
Artwork
#animals
#cardboard
#conservation
#Josh Gluckstein
#paper
#sculpture
All photographs © Josh Gluckstein, shared with permission
Since childhood, London-based artist Josh Gluckstein has been fascinated by the unimaginable variety of our planet’s wildlife and impressed to make sculptures of animals from discovered supplies. He typically makes use of discarded or recycled supplies like clothes from thrift outlets or wooden from outdated furnishings, and an vital facet of his apply is concern for the atmosphere. “I’ve travelled by Asia, Latin America, and East Africa, and have been lucky sufficient to have some unimaginable wildlife encounters,” he says. “Nonetheless, on my travels, even in probably the most distant places, I used to be shocked by the massive quantities of plastic waste.”
A lot of the rubbish that washes up on shorelines world wide is because of an unregulated system wherein richer nations export waste to growing nations as a result of it’s typically cheaper than growing higher infrastructures to deal with it. Lots of the hundreds of delivery containers exported every year are sometimes dumped illegally. Gluckstein shares:
I bear in mind going to the Galapagos Islands and visiting a seashore well-known for a big inhabitants of sea lions. It was certainly unimaginable to see them within the wild, however on each inch of sand not lined by sea lions, there have been plastic bottles and cans. It was a heartbreaking sight. I knew I wished to create paintings that didn’t create waste and hurt our planet.
Gluckstein fashions life-like portraits of elephants, primates, pangolins, and massive cats out of cardboard by tearing, chopping, and gluing items collectively into expressive visages, typically making use of skinny washes of paint for added depth and element. He typically works on a number of sculptures at a time, and a bit can take between every week or a number of months to finish relying on the dimensions or quantity of element. “In lockdown, at residence and out of my studio, I used to be very eager to get to work, however didn’t have the entry to the supplies I might normally use,” he says. “That’s after I found cardboard, which was available, and I discovered it to be an extremely versatile medium.”
A brand new sequence known as Gold focuses on trafficked animals by making use of gold leaf to their our bodies, highlighting the explanations they’re poached. The pangolin, for instance, is critically endangered as a result of it’s illegally hunted primarily for its meat and distinctive scales. Gluckstein plans to indicate these works subsequent month at Woolff Gallery in London, with a portion of gross sales donated to the WWF. Observe updates on Instagram, and see extra of the artist’s work on his web site.
#animals
#cardboard
#conservation
#Josh Gluckstein
#paper
#sculpture
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