Sculpture Trail

(written yesterday....)Today i went to Birmingham city centre with my college class. We were given the task of following a sculpture trail from the Council house down to the Custard Factory in Digbeth. I was surprised by the amount of sculptures in Birmingham that I had not seen before such as the one above in the Custard Factory. I was particularly fascinated by this as it shows human figures that appear to be falling from the sky. I was interested in the way each figure has a different body shape, which is perhaps not traditionally perfect. Some had a little bit extra fat on their bodies. However I like this about the work as I am a strong believer that the human body should be portrayed how it actually looks is reality rather than what it should look like idealistically. I feel that idealistic representations of the human body, such as ultra skinny females in magazines, can cause some people to feel ashamed of their own bodies.*During the day four of us volunteered to be extras in a film. This involved dressing up in fancy dress and pretending to be at a party in a nightclub. I had to dress up as Cleopatra which was rather amusing. I felt this built upon the experience I gained when visiting the hustle film set a few weeks ago(see older posts). t was interesting to see how a film set works and how films are made. It is astonishing how long each scene takes to get right.*We also visited the Ikon Gallery to see two exhibitions - Kitagawa Utamaro and Donald Judd. Judd's exhibition was mainly furniture he has designed, it appears to be purely made for one thing which its function. Judd's opinion is "The configuration and scale of art cannot be transposed into furniture and architecture. The intent of art is different from that of the latter, which must be functional. "I feel he is trying take furniture back to its purest form, which is to for fill its function  e.g. a chair is purely to be sat on.Kitagawa Utamaro's work is from the late 1700s the exhibition was mainly woodblock prints of women. Along with some graphic sexual images known as 'shunga'. I did enjoy both of the exhibitions but none of the work really excited me or make me go- 'wow'. I have however come across an artist who's work really excites me his name is James Jean a page of his sketch book is above :) he uses various media to create life like yet cartoon like pictures i love them :) x