As a child, there are endless possibilities at play in our experimental minds, unfettered by hard realities or mere gravity. In the world of children, everyone seems like a giant. Acting upon your own configured and perfectly ordered universe, proportion necessarily intimates that you have become the giant, and all of these toys are miniature playthings for you alone to determine the fate of.
London based artist Michael John Hunter is fascinated by this transformation of relative size and revisits the implications in the adult world, occasionally foisting his hyper-realistic and detailed sculptures into public space.
Practicing over a decade in this scaled world, the sculptures, sometimes 17-footlong barbie dolls laying in the street, surprise and perplex you when you run into one – causing you to glance around the immediate surrounding area to reassure you that you haven’t sudden shrunken. He photographs his own work, and this practice only intensifies the cognitive puzzlement, an intentional shooting from a certain height and angle with a specific focus technique.
All tolled, his artistic/sociologic practice is a welcome examination of perceptions and our own relative awarding of importance that is based on our individual assessment of people, places, and things.
He tells us: “After the lockdown was over here I finally was able to finish another sculpture and get it out into the street to photograph. It is the same concept as all my previous works.”
Check out this artist @michaeljohnhunter
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