How charming is this series of works by artist Robert Bradford? These life sized (or larger) pieces are all created from discarded toys and plastic items.
Here's what Robert has to say about his work:
For a long time now, I have preferred to use materials that are not bland, i.e. have some kind of history of weathering or use. One day about four years ago, out in the studio, I was looking into my children's box of outgrown/discarded toys, which happened to be stored in the same building and responded to the random collection of colours, shapes, and forms they made. I figured that if I could find a way of putting them together to constitute a larger form they would have great potential as larger scale sculpture.
Over the next while, I experimented with two other construction methods (which both had their downsides) before one day about a year ago, in frustration, I tried putting a screw through one toy and then many others. To my surprise most didn't crack or shatter and the new series has been largely based around and developed from that fact.
Ideally the pieces will work on many levels. The toys themselves interest me in their own right as mini sculptures by unknown and uncredited artists. Mostly, I use the toys abstractly as forms with which to build muscle, bone, or internal (or external) organs; but all types of human pursuits can be referred to and represented through them: things loved or hated, things used and carried as tools, etc., etc. They provide interest in surface detail, whilst making their contribution to the totalities. The toys also provide a moving history of fads and fashions as they pass through the media and our awareness, temporarily significant and then forgotten.
Public reaction to the sculptures has been largely very positive, in some cases gleeful. Often, children drag their parents to come and look at the pieces and then a whole sequence of recognition and recollection usually begins, naming the various toys and recalling the times and circumstances of their use. There is usually some fascination with the sculptures, the individual toys used, and with the process of their acquistion and construction. Sometimes, there is outright laughter. There is usually a whole process of going back and forth between looking at the sculptures as a totality and the individual parts from which they are made (which of course is my intention). Some people, of course, just say they are rubbish, which is perfectly true! There is also often talk about consumerism, waste, and recycling, which, whilst not being my central concern, is also, in my view, positive when it occurs. Some find the sculptures beautiful/curious/scary/weird/emotional and etc., which, considering all they really are is bits of what is usually seen as trash, is great.
In a way, the sculptures are also history pieces. In the sense that you could date any one of them. roughly speaking, from the tie that the last toy screwed onto the sculpture was produced.
What do you think? Where could you imagine placing these sculptures?
Thanks to Robert Bradford
