Cosmo Sarson Lecture.

Today we had a lecture from the artist Cosmo Sarson- previously I had looked online about his work so I would be prepared to ask him questions about it and also so I knew what I was going to be seeing.  I found his work really interesting because I had never seen some of it done before such as the interactive mural he showed us. The lecture was intriguing because he was talking about he is mainly into fine art to begin with, but then had to expand his knowledge and broaden his horizons in order to get a bigger portfolio and more work- such as architecture and set designing.

Here is a link to his website containing his work, the journey it took to get there and pictures and reflections of the process; http://www.cosmosarson.com/

Some of his work includes; Advertising art director, TV and film art director, scenic artist, concept/artist and fine artist. How he started off was quite interesting, he did a fine art and painting degree and then went into advertising for money purposes, but wanted to do more art. He called up Pinewood studios to ask to talk to the set designer and from that got a job painting sets and props to fund his studio time and has worked on films such as Guardians of the Galaxy, Pirates of the Caribbean and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which really interested me. I was also curious as to what the process of set painting would be- he said that you would plan and draw a storyboard, get a script, plan camera angles, shots, etc and have meetings with the directors to discuss minor details. He also gets the scales of sets and photographs and makes prototypes first. I was quite shocked to find out that he could work on a set for months and months and then the director of even the actor could say that they do not like the way it looks and it could be instantly scrapped.

I loved some of his art murals- he had a quite controversial piece called 'Breakdancing Jesus' which caused mixed reviews. I thought this was really interesting, I love pieces of art that cause a lot of debate as to whether it should be made or not, he said it caused a bit of trouble from the religious communities in Belfast. This image of the mural went viral, and you can see how truly vast this was from looking at him stood next to it in the corner, and the amount of work that went into it.

Another piece of his that I found the most interesting was the interactive mural, which was made in Windsor. To make this work you downloaded an app on your phone called Aurasma and then when you pointed your phone and the mural it moved and talked. I just thought this was so clever and had never seen anything like this done before and I would love to see this in the flesh. There is a video showing this working on his website.








He also talked about how some of his murals were anamorphic projections, which allowed for camera angles to make them look especially good when photographed. He said that some of his inspirations were people such as Carvaggio, Andy Warhol, The Chapman brothers and Banksy.

When asked what he is currently doing he talked about how he looked at Greek mythology and got people he knew to pose in positions from myths and then painted them into murals, paintings and such. This particular work on the right took on an entirely different meaning because it was before the Islamic State murders in which they beheaded people. And so that means that now when members of the public look at that mural they will have an entirely different association with it. But because it is on a massive wall, it is not so easy to just cover up or destroy.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed this lecture because of how diverse and how he had worked on a whole range of interesting projects.