Concept
For this brief, I started looking at appropriation images on Pinterest and came across a style that many different artists were using. This style consisted of using an item that could be found around the house and editing it in a way that includes either food or an animal to give the whole image a new concept. These photographers also changed the background to a block colour (mainly pastel colours) that complements the colours used in the edited object.
Influences
Sasha Favorov
The first piece of work that I found of Sasha’s showed what was previously a light bulb but had been edited to show a lemon instead of a bulb, on a complementary light blue background. As the size of a lemon is similar in scale to a light bulb, this makes the image more realistic. I liked this idea of work as it shows a bright piece of the same shape as a light bulb, but still, gives the same look of what the original image would look like. Some of the colour connotations of yellow include brightness and energy. These are both elements of what a light bulb is, so using a lemon in replacement of a bulb works well. https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/429249408219486398/
When searching for more work from Favorov, I came across the image of which shows two people against each other that is similar to shootouts in Western movies. Yet instead of showing the weapons as guns, one had a knife and the other has replaced a gun with a banana. To show the scale of the knife and banana in proportion, they are held by two hands to show that the scale is correct to what the actual object is. The use of this colour for the background could possibly represent how the original image of gun use represents death and using red connects the image with the connotations of danger and aggression. https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/537124693032118740/
Sarah Illenberger
Like Sasha Favorov, Sarah’s work follows a similar style of changing items that are found around the house to be edited to show some element of food to them. While searching on Pinterest, I came across these two pieces of work from Sarah that stood out to me. The first is an image of a lipstick which has been changed to show a carrot instead of the product. On Sarah’s website, she says that the meaning behind this image is ‘This portfolio of images began on a food market stroll in Tuscany/Italy. From the Melon-choly to Pome-grenade, almost every fruit or vegetable was given a new meaning’. (https://www.sarahillenberger.com/work/16/tutti-frutti)
The second image that I found is of headphones but the speakers have been replaced with 2 cupcake cases. In these 2 images, with what has been replaced with an element of food is shown in a much brighter colour so that you look at that first when you first see the image. Due to making the main focus on the bright colour of the food, the backgrounds are a much lighter colour so that the attention is not drawn away from food edit in the images. In both of these images, the scale of them is correct in relation to the original object (lipstick and headphones) before been appropriated. To show this in the lipstick image, the lid of the lipstick is shown slightly behind the body of the lipstick to show the proportion of how big the object is. In the image showing headphones, the use of cupcake cases works with the scaling of this image to the original image as the cases are the same size as what they would be on headphones. A large amount of her work is heavily food themed and appears in a lot of magazines and newspapers, this website shows more of her work in this style; http://www.eatmedaily.com/2009/09/the-food-art-of-sarah-illenberger/
Lipstick- https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/433190057884374958/
Headphones- https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/370139663103634326/
Paul Fuentes
As well are looking on Pinterest for artists, I also looked on Instagram and came across Paul Fuentes (Paulfuentes_design) page who’s work entails appropriation using animals and food. Unlike the other 2 artists who uses a range of colours, Paul’s work on Instagram is mostly made up of pinks, blues and purples. (https://www.instagram.com/paulfuentes_design/?hl=en)
The first image that I found is a handbag, but the body of the bag has been replaced with a taco. I like how the shape of the bag has been kept with the use of the correct food. As a lot of Pauls work shows pastel pinks, blues and purples, that rule has been followed in this image. When it comes to the scale of this image, the appropriation creates a small looking handbag due to the use of a taco replacing the body of the bag. For the scale to be more realistic, a use of different food would work better for this appropriated object.
Another image that I came across of Fuentes work included a piece of sushi with the fish been replaced my a cat laid on it’s back. The scale of the cat on the rice is incorrect. Sushi is only a small piece of food and a cat is a lot larger as an object. Despite the appropriation of this image been smaller in scale, the full image in itself still works. The use of colours on this image gives the look that the image is actually a piece of sushi until you look in more detail and realise that it is a ginger cat in replace of the salmon that would normally be there.
More of Paul’s appropriation work- http://www.paulfuentesdesign.com/work
The work of these 3 artists is posted on social media websites (Pinterest and Instagram). These platforms are used mainly to promote images of different artists and that is what is happening for these 3. Helping their work to gain popularity and reach to a wider audience through these platforms.
Reflection
After looking at these 3 artists, I was able to take inspiration from each of there style to create my own final images using appropriation with items from around the home, food and animals. I edited 4 images, each one having a similar style to the work of Sasha Favorov, Sarah Illenberger and Paul Fuentes. The first was an image of a cello tape dispenser which I edited to have a doughnut and rainbow strip sweet as the cello tape, this idea came from Sasha Favorvo’s work who takes items from around the house and edits them using food. I went onto changing the background to a pale pink which was inspiration from the work of Paul Fuentes. My second image that I took was of my hair straighteners, I edited this image to change the context of it to make the image look like the mouth of a crocodile. Paul Fuentes work was an inspiration for this. As crocodiles are a dark green colour, I changed the background of this image to a pale green, the reasoning behind this is to show how animals belong in the wild and the use of green represents nature and the outdoors. The third image I created again is inspired by Paul Fuentes work of using animals in my photographs. For this, I took an image of a sheep off of the internet and replaced the wool with an image of a cloud that I had taken myself. Even though this doesn’t follow the idea of changing items from around the house into either animals or food, I still edited the image in this way to see if I could put my own stamp on the image. I changed the background to be a light blue, the reason as to why I did this is to represent a sky that the cloud (sheep’s body) would be in. The final image that I took was a bottle of nail polish, I edited this by adding the label from a Nando’s sauce bottle to it. For this image, my inspiration came from Sarah Illengerger’s work of having branded items mixed with food. I also took inspiration from her use of background and used a white background instead of adding any colour like how the other artists have.
Appropriation images take the elements from a normal image and change them into creating a new world of images, something that is weird and different. Sometimes these edits may make a viewer uncomfortable due to the change of an image, but also catch the audience’s attention more just because the image is different in a good way.
Examples:
