Chroma Tales

In my new work, Chroma Tales, I’ve studied a selection of trophies sourced from my local community which celebrate athletic achievements from football and tennis to jazz ballet. These forsaken trophies usually include a figure posed in an archetypal way denoting the sport that they represent. I’ve removed the figures from their structures and modified them by cutting or grinding away their obvious sporting references. By arranging them into unexpected compositions on a set lit with highly saturated light, their monochromatic bodies become tinted with colour palettes designed to further defy their sporting origins and introduce another layer of expressiveness to their form. The images reference moments in popular culture – the kaleidoscopic optimism of 1930s musicals, the emotion-provoking colour palettes of vintage animation and the seductive artifice of 1980s airbrush illustration. This highly stylised and polished aesthetic is achieved in-camera without digital compositing or graphics tools. By changing their context, the accepted meaning of the figures and their gestures becomes negotiable. I’ve used them to express narratives based on life experiences that are formative, but not necessarily particular to me.