This project is to recreate, manipulate or interpret an image in Four different ways.
I chose the image of Queen Elizabeth as depicted on the British 2nd class stamp. I specifically chose an older style image of Queen dating to approximately the 1980’s as I preferred it over the current portrait. I selected this image not because I have any real affinity for it or emotional attachment but because of its utter banality, it has been used for decades on every stamp, coin and bank note and has been reproduced hundreds of millions of times. For this reason was I wanted to alter the image, make it less than perfect or less banal, this would also make a gesture to the defacing of normal stamps and bank notes which would render them worthless.
I started out making a 1/1 scale oil painting of the stamp in question, this was rather tricky due to its size and using the smallest brush I could find. It was relatively successful as it did fool a few people on first inspection. The second was the image above. This is approximately 1.5m x 1m in size and is of mixed media. The underpainting features are heavy impasto made using French chalk mixed with PVA glue and applied in thick lines. Then using house hold emulsion the painting developed in the original colour scheme of the stamp. The final phase was to deface the image in a graffiti style with spray paint. The text ‘I’m A Celebrity’ is not only a play on the television program but also the fact that the Queen is one of the most famous and photographed people on the planet yet not a celebrity in the modern sense of the term in television shows, social media or reality programmes.
The Third image was a more tradition collage piece. An A4 size image of 15 stamps but with each image cut out and repositioned in a different place and slightly offset creating a shadow effect. The image in the top right hand corner where the stamp would traditionally be placed for posting was again misplaced and left blank with the cut out almost discarded at the bottom of the piece, in reality a letter without a stamp would not be valid or delivered thus rendering the stamp and the letter devoid of usefulness.
The final image was more sculptural. A foam manikin head was used to make a dystopian image of the queen. Using the original blue colour the crown was replaced with large nails pushed into her head, her famous pearl necklace was replaced with further nails driven into her neck and shoulders. The pearl earrings were again replaced with nails and she also received Two addition piercings in her upper ear. Two other displacements were in the crown which was now lowered and acted as her dress covering her modesty and her pearl necklace had been elevated to represent her exposed brain. The head cavity was exposed and painted a deep shade of red, additionally the right hand side of her face which would not been seen on the stamp was also hacked away giving the image an undead zombie effect. Slightly disturbing but I feel it did meet the brief.
Michael Palmer 