NUMSKULL
For our most recent Edition, we invited our close friend and well known Sydney based artist Numskull (Elliott Routledge) to create an Edition of his timber ‘geode’ sculptures. This was not a new thing for him, he has previously made a number of individual experimental timber sculptures of a similar concept for various exhibitions and projects, but had never gone about making a cohesive series or Edition of them.
The ‘geode’ shapes are derived from the irregular patterned objects found floating in Numskull's recent murals and paintings, and it only felt a natural progression to take these forms into the third dimension and craft them into actual objects.
Our encouragement began with simply sourcing some solid hardwood timber for the Edition, we ended up finding the perfect piece of Grey Iron Bark at a recycled timber yard in Sydney. We got it dressed and cut up into 30cm blocks ready for Numskull to get to work with.
The following few months would see him in his studio chipping away at each of the 9 sculptures in between other projects, working the angles out of the timber with various woodworking tools, slowly revealing the unique geometric aspects of each piece.
After each piece of hardwood was hand cut, grinded, carved and sanded back, it was time for the painting to begin, Numskull started adding his wide range of patterns and typographic elements to the timber forms, utilising 3 different colour palettes to create a total of 9 sculptures in 3 distinct colourways. Then once each piece was painted, some light sanding was added to create textural effects and to help define the angles.
The resulting Edition of 9 hand crafted and painted solid timber sculptures are a true representation of Numskull's ongoing body of artwork, and successfully transport aspects of his paintings into reality and the third dimension.
We hope you enjoy these process images of this Edition being hand crafted and painted by Numskull in his Sydney studio.
Find out more information about Numskull here