christophermadden

A study in the perception and interpretation of images

What’s wrong with this picture?

Photograph

What’s wrong with this picture?

A study in the perception and interpretation of images.

This photograph is an undoctored image, but it’s very hard to decipher what exactly’s going on in it. It looks like an aerial photo of rows of terraced houses, but there’s something not quite right about it.

Have a look near the very top left hand corner and you may realise what it is you’re looking at. You can see a line of cars there, but they are all upside down.

The photo is just a straight photo that’s being viewed upside down. The unexpected orientation of the image creates the effect of disoriention in the observer.

The photo shows the way in which the observer tries to construct a meaningful interpretation of an image that is giving confusing and ambiguous cues. The observer may easily be able to recognise that the image shows the walls of houses because the windows and doors are easily identifiable. And there are house roofs here too, but these components don’t seem to marry up properly to create a coherent whole.

It’s a study in visual perception and interpretation.

For the sake of efficiency the brain makes a lot of assumptions about what it’s perceiving at any moment, so it takes a few cues and interprets things from there.It only does any extra work if it notices that things don’t add up, as here. If it didn’t do that it would have to analyse everything from first principals and you’d need a brain as big as a planet to do anything.

The photograph with the correct orientation

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Carne Cottage, Zennor Hill

Carne Cottage is at the top of Zennor Hill, which rises up above the village of Zennor in Cornwall.

I walk up the hill frequently, as I live at the bottom of it, sometimes just to do a few sketches and sometimes to create temporary sculptural works using materials such as umbrellas and brightly coloured lengths of wood.

A sketch of a Zennor Hill rock formation.

A sketch of a granite outcrop on the top of Zennor Hill

Granite boulders on the top of Zennor Hill

Carne Cottage (or the Carn, or Carn Cottage), was once owned by celebrated artist Bryan Wynter, and more recently by artist Margo Maeckelberghe.

Along with his more usual oil paintings Bryan Wynter created a number of mirror-based artworks that I particularly like in a series titled IMOOS. Read about them here.

Carne Cottage, Zennor Hill

The cottage has been in a completely ruined state for many years and is currently (late 2024) for sale for the second time in five years.

The estate agent’s description of the property makes great play about the remoteness of Carne Cottage, as though it is in an isolated and secluded location where no human activity will intrude on the site’s tranquility.

How wrong.

The location is on a popular footpath from Zennor, frequented by tourists, walkers (and the occasional motorbiker) going to explore the granite outcrops on the hill’s summit and to visit Zennor Quoit, a prehistoric burial chamber that’s only a short distance from the cottage.

The cottage itself is also an attraction for visitors who are interested in its alleged links to infamous satanist Aleister Crowley. Judging by the graffiti and detritus inside the house Carne Cottage is an occasional overnight stop-over for devil worshippers (or more likely it’s just teenagers who want to scare themselves).

I’ve been up the hill myself at night under a full moon and have come across other people up there at the same time. Fortunately they usually seem to be practitioners of “Earth Goddess” spirituality rather than people intent on a black mass. Carne Cottage and its environs hold a strong attraction to people of a particular type of mystical sensibility.

The hill top is visited less frequently outside the holiday season, obviously, but that’s partly because of the howling wind, driving rain or blanket fog to which the location is particularly prone (Bryan Wynter’s studio blew down in a gale). It’s a lovely location on a nice day, but when it’s not nice it’s bleak, bleak, bleak. The bleakness does have its own appeal though, if you’ve got the right temperament for it.

A misty day at Carne Cottage, Zennor Hill

A misty day at Carne Cottage, Zennor Hill

A misty day at Carne Cottage, Zennor Hill

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Anthropomorphic found object sculpture

Homo Habilis – Man the Toolmaker

Steel pliers, ceramic head, magnet. 15x15x1cm August 2024

An anthropomorphic sculpture composed of a pair of pliers to which a ceramic head has been attached.

I made the head about thirty years ago in around 1994.

I call the piece Homo Habilis after the extinct species of human that lived in Eastern and Southern Africa about two million years ago. Homo Habilis literally means Handy Man, which in my piece nicely links to the handyman’s tool, the pliers. Homo Habilis is also referred to as ‘Man the Toolmaker’, which links equally nicely with the piece.

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Worker’s tools in contemporary art

Wall mounted sculpture from workman’s tool

Pliers, wood, paper, acrylic. August 2024. 335x335x30mm

A pair of workman’s pliers mounted on coloured paper with three painted hemispheres of wood attached.

To me the pliers have a pleasing anthropomorphic appearance, with their handles resembling legs (here dressed in brightly coloured trousers or stockings).

The three hemispheres disrupt the shape of the pliers, visually separating the jaws at the top of the tool from the base. This is reinforced by the fact that these particular pliers have brightly coloured plastic on the handles (the trousers) which are there to insulate the user of the pliers from any accidental contact with live electricity.

The use of handyman’s or workman’s tools such as hammers, pliers and spanners is a recurring theme in my work.

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Mirror and coloured hemispheres

Mirror art

Mirror, wood, paper, acrylic. 30 x 30 x 20cm. August 2024

A mirror-based artwork. It features a mirror mounted perpendicular to a coloured ground on which are mounted two hemispheres in different colours. The hemispheres are positioned so that the reflection of one hemisphere in the mirror precisely coincides with the position of the other hemisphere. This creates an intriguing effect when the viewer observes the work from different angles.

Mirrors are a useful device for the exploration of perception and the interpretation of what we see. I think this is partly because perfect reflections like those found in mirrors are almost nonexistent in the natural world other than when they are observed on stretches of water such as puddles, ponds and lakes in perfectly still conditions. When you look at a puddle, a pond or a lake you know exactly what you’re looking at, so your brain knows that the reflection in its surface is an optical effect, especially because the nature of the surface will usually be betrayed by the occasional ripple or the presence of a floating object such as a leaf or a duck.

Mirrors however are different. They can easily be placed in an artificial context in which the brain has to do a bit of work in deciding what it’s actually looking at. And to compound this, mirrors are almost always vertical (which the surface of a puddle or a pond never is). Put a mirror in a slightly unusual context and the brain can be deceived, which is a good avenue into the study of perception.

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Tissue box sculpture

Sculpture created from a tissue box.

Tissue box, gouache. 310x160x55mm June 2021

I’ve noticed several artworks recently that are modelled on the shape of tissue boxes. These include one in the recent 2024 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (Mannanan by Brian Kneale RA) and a mention of them relating to the work of Florence Carr who is set to do a solo presentation at Frieze London 2024 this October.

A version of my tissue box work containing an object in the form of a door lock (showing the internal structure).

Above are a couple of photos of one of my own experiments with tissue boxes in which I painted an old tissue box blue on the outside and red on the inside.

My tissue box sculpture was probably inspired by seeing a large marble work by Anish Kapoor in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in (I think) 2021.

I very much doubt that the Anish Kapoor work was inspired by the shape of a tissue box, however once I’d seen the similarity I couldn’t get it out of my head, very much in the same way that once you’ve seen the shape of a human form in an abstract painting you can’t unsee it.

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The shape of numbers – and the perception of form

A study in the abstract shape of numbers

Video. 2024

A video of a 30mph speed limit road sign with the number 30 rotating within the circular sign. The figure 30 in the sign has been rotated digitally.

This concept occurred to me spontaneously when I looked at the sign (Having said that, I’ve walked past this sign many times over the past few decades and the idea has never occured to me before – more on that later). The sign is in Market Drayton, Shropshire, where I grew up.

One of the points that the video is hopefully making is about the nature of the shapes of numbers (and by association, of letters too). I’m interested in the fact that the shapes of numbers (and letters) are to a large extent random. You can understand why the number one is represented by the shape 1, which is essentially the simplest possible mark that can be made to represent the presence of something, and why zero is represented by 0, which is possibly a symbol that visualises an empty space. But why is 4 the shape that it is, or 5,6,7,8,9?

Bearing this interest in the shapes of numbers in mind, one of the features of the video is the way that it emphasises the changing shape of the numbers as they rotate. When the 3 and the 0 have rotated by 90º and are on their sides they no longer look like the number 30 viewed sideways but as distinctly different shapes – especially the 3. The 3 stops being a 3 and starts becoming a mysterious symbol. This phenomenon works particularly well with the numbers 3 and 0 because the shapes of these numbers are more or less symmetrical about a horizontal axis through their centres. It wouldn’t work so well with, say, the number 47, where the brain would probably have a lot more difficulty seeing the digits as nothing other than the 4 and the 7 at unusual angles.

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Ball and Bottle – found objects sculpture

Found objects sculpture – ball and bottle

Ball, bottle 23 x 5.5 x 5.5cm June 2024

A sculpture composed of found objects.

The sphere that’s resting on top of the bottle is an old tennis ball that has lost all of its coating and that seems to have been left outside in the elements for a very long time. I think I found it in the garden, probably lost there by the previous owner of the property. Because of its colour, patina and texture it looks a lot more substantial than it actually is.

The shape of the bottle and the fact that the glass isn’t of uniform thickness suggests a vintage vessel, but it is actually a contemporary supermarket salad dressing bottle that was still being used for its original purpose the day before it was requisitioned for this sculpture. The salad dressing company were probably trying to tap into the current demand for artisan foodstuffs and consumer goods.

The found objects in this sculpture are unmodified and there is minimal physical input or compositional decisions that need making in the creation the work (The ball has to be place on top of the bottle, pure and simple). This probably makes the piece a form of readymade.

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London Eye watercolour and ink sketch

London Eye watercolour and ink sketch

Watercolour and ink on Arches watercolour paper. 13x20cm. 11th June 2024

A sketch of the London Eye.

The line art was drawn first, using, appropriately, a Uni-ball Eye ballpoint pen. The ink in these pens is waterproof, so it was no problem to then add a blue watercolour wash over the drawing to create the sky.

The sky was created using Sennelier cerulean blue watercolour. This colour is good for skies because it’s easy to lift the colour off the paper with a tissue or suchlike to create white clouds (and because it’s a nice colour).

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Spheres in a mirror

Spheres in a mirror

Mirror, wood, acrylic 29x29x6cm May 2024

A sculptural work composed of coloured hemispheres reflected in a mirror to create the illusion of complete spheres.

The mirror is a front coated mirror so that there is no gap between the hemispheres resting on the surface of the mirror and the reflection.

The sculpture includes one complete sphere that creates the effect of a pair of spheres when reflected. This sphere is there for compositional purposes, but it fortuitously helps to emphasise the nature of the reflections of the hemispheres.

This work can be wall mounted or can be displayed horizontally.

The work explores the themes of mirrors, reflections and illusions that have featured recurrently in my work over the decades.

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Art about oppression – contemporary political sculpture

The Oppressor Empaled. A sculpture about oppression.

Hammer, nails, wood. 18x34x26cm. May 2023.

This sculpture was shown in the ING Discerning Eye exhibition in the Mall Galleries, London, November 2024. It is a work of political art, in the form of a metaphor for oppression and rebellion.
The work shows a hammer empaled by nails.
Part of the concept behind the sculpture is that the hammer is being impaled by the objects that it normally hits – the nails. The hammer is a symbol of oppression and dictatorship and the nails are symbols of the oppressed.
But the sculpture poses a question – how did the nails manage to drive themselves into the hammer? Nails by their nature need a hammer, or a stand-in for a hammer, in order to be effective and to fulfil their purpose. Were the nails hammered into the hammer by another hammer? In that case the nails are not a metaphor for the oppressed rising up against their oppressor (the hammer) using their own power, but are more like the followers of another power (another hammer?) that may turn out to be as oppressive as the hammer that they’ve empaled.

The leaders of liberation movements against repression often become oppressors or dictators in their turn.

This sculpture is a development of an idea that I had in 2010 when it started life as a drawing of a hammer with three nails driven into it.
Since then it developed into a 3D sculptural work composed of a hammer nailed directly onto a flat surface as though pinned down.
The iteration here has the hammer suspended above a surface and with many more nails driven into it so that it’s starting to resemble a nail fetish figure.

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Reflections

Reflections in two angled mirrors

Mirrors, wood blocks, acrylic 30x30x27cm January 2022

Two angled mirrors creating multiple reflections.

The mirrors are angled at 45º to each other and the wood blocks between the mirrors each have a 45º angle at one end, allowing them to fit perfectly into the space between the mirrors.

The wood blocks are movable, allowing different patterns to be created. Due to the 45º angles of the mirrors the patterns are often in the form of crosses with square elements superimposed.

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Environmental art. One World – globe sculpture

One World. Environmental art

Environmental art sculpture, commercially bought globes. February 2023.

The sculpture is composed of one large globe with several smaller globes attached to it.

The use of a globe of the Earth in the sculpture reflects my interest in environmental issues and in creating environmental art. My concerns about environmentalism go back to the 1960s, when I was mainly concerned with threats to wildlife. Since then the list of environmental concerns has grown and now includes climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation and other aspects of environmentalism.

One of several interpretations of the work is that it shows that on the one physical planet Earth there exist multiple cultural world-views.

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Mirror sculpture

Mirror art. Interlinked rings.

Mirror, card, acrylic. 30x30x18cm Feb 2024

A sculpture composed of a mirror with a sculptural form made of card and paper attached to its surface. The card and paper are painted with acrylic paint.

The interlinking of, and interplay between, the horizontal and vertical forms in the sculpture are significant features of the piece.

The upright sculptural forms are held in place on the mirror by magnets attached to the back of the mirror. The magnets attract small pieces of steel tape that are embedded in the card of the sculpture. This ensures that the sculpture can be held invisibly on the mirror, with no obvious means of attachment such as fasteners or glue.

The mirror in this piece is a standard rear-coated mirror, so there is a separation between the objects on the mirror and their reflections. Some of the pieces on the mirror are painted a different colour on the side that is facing the mirror so that the underside adds an extra element to the composition. In other works where I don’t want a separation between the objects and their reflections I use front-coated mirrors.

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Anthropomorphic Assemblage from Tools

Anthropomorphic Sculpture from Tools

Steel pliers, magnet. 8x3x18cm February 2024

A sculpture composed of a pair of large pliers and a pair of small pliers. I suppose it fits into the category of sculpture made with found objects or sculptures made of scrap. The pliers are held together by a magnet, although they do actually balance without it, if a bit precariously. The resulting figure resembles a person with arms held high and with horns. Maybe a demon. The figure actually reminds me of a bodybuilder: the stocky torso and muscular legs, not to mention the pose.

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Mirror art – Squaring the Circle

Mirror art. Squaring the Circle

Mirror, card, paper, acrylic. 28x28x18cm Feb 2024

A mirror piece consisting of a semicircle of card half of which passes inside a box-like construction. The semicircle and box are resting on a mirror so that the semicircle appears to be part of a full circle that enters and exits the box.

The reflection of the box makes the box appear to be half of a square structure, with the circle entering and leaving the interior of the square via its openings where the square is cut. This gives rise to the title of the piece, Squaring the Circle.

The mirror is a front-coated (or first-coated) mirror. Unlike standard mirrors that have their reflective coating on the rear surface of the glass front-coated mirrors have the reflective surface on the front. With a standard mirror the thickness of the glass creates a gap or space between the object on the glass and the reflection, while with a front-coated mirror the object and the reflection are ‘touching’.

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Watercolour pencil art – Organic Matrix

Watercolour pencil art – Organic Matrix

Watercolour pencil on paper. 20 x 29cm January 2024

A painting, created with watercolour pencils, depicting a network or matrix of organic forms linked by tube-like structures.

The work is from the imagination (as you can see), and although it wasn’t created with any particular meaning in mind it probably alludes to the connectedness of life, with the blobby entities being connected to each other by the tube-like structures. I’m not sure whether the blobs are meant to look like slightly unsettling organisms or wonky potatoes. Probably both. The work may allude in some way to the nature of consciousness or intelligence, with the entities possibly communicating with each other like cells in a brain.

A work on paper created using Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle watercolour pencils, which have a very high pigment content.

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Lunging Figure – gouache on paper

Lunging figure

Gouache on paper. 350 x 250mm November 2018

A gouache work on paper featuring a lunging figure.

The work is from the imagination and was created as part of a series of relatively spontaneous, unmediated artworks.

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Black spheres, red sphere

Black spheres, red sphere

Digital. December 2023

An abstract image created using Procreate on an iPad

The black spheroid forms seem to be holding the smaller red spherical form in suspension between them. The proximity of the black spheres gives the small gap between them the feeling of some form of concentrated energy.

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Mirror art – Flite

Mirror art. Flite.

Mirror, card, acrylic. 28x28x18cm Feb 2024

A wall mounted mirror piece.

A wall mounted sculpture composed of a mirror with a sculptural form made of card attached to its surface. The card is painted with acrylic paint.

The sculptural form is held in place on the mirror by a magnet attached to the back of the mirror. The magnet attracts a small piece of steel tape that is embedded in the card of the sculpture. This ensures that the sculpture can be held invisibly on the mirror, with no obvious means of attachment such as bolts or glue.

The mirror is a front-coated (or first-coated) mirror. Unlike standard mirrors that have their reflective coating on the rear surface of the glass front-coated mirrors have the reflective surface on the front. If a standard mirror had been used the thickness of the glass would have created a gap or space between the object on the glass and its reflection, while with a front-coated mirror the object and the reflection are ‘touching’.

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