All posts by Special Art Effects

Turkish in fright!

Laura Colouring Paul
Final Touches Detail Nurettin
Hanging Ayhan Breakthrough

Paul & Laura have just completed one of their most challenging projects to date. Created for their Turkish client, the wax portraits portray two workmen accidentally falling through the ceiling in the private collection at the Istanbul Modern Art Museum. The works are animatronic and can swing to-and-fro at the flick of a switch. The only consolation for the desperate pair is they have the most amazing view of the Bosphorus.

The view of the Bosphorus

The Ultimate Performing player

Who is the ultimate player?  With the help of Special Art Effects, Castrol have created a ground-breaking hybrid player formed of the constituent parts of the world’s best players:

LEGS: Cristiano Ronaldo

LEFT FOOT: Lionel Messi

RIGHT FOOT: Thierry Henry

ARMS: Rory Delap

HEIGHT: Peter Crouch

HANDS: Julio Cesar

STAMINA: Michael Ballack

Taking this age-old debate at face value and applying the expertise of Paul and Laura Carey a life-sized waxwork sculpture of the Ultimate Player has been realised.  As Alan Sheera affirms, the project lets fans get more involved, offering a revolutionary insight into the beautiful game.

http://www.castrolfootball.com/upp/making.php

This project was a huge challenge for Paul and Laura as it through up all sorts of conflicts in creating such an unsual piece particularly in the area of the portrait, ‘how do you structure a portrait with so many different conflicting features’? (that don’t naturally blend together). The figure was also complicated as it has the height of Peter Crouch and limbs of players less taller, so the natural proportions would not appear anatomically correct. The pose of the figure had to also reflect the Ultimate Player’s strength and ability balanced on one foot showing complete control of the ball.

The ultimate player has started his journey in South America and will be moving to South Africa for the world cup.  Watch out for the Ultimate player, he’s on tour after the World Cup!

Ultimate Performing Player

Sven Goran-Eriksson unveils the Ultimate Performing Player

Special Art Effects gets Goked!

For series 6 How to Look Good Naked…With a Difference Gok enlisted the help of SAFX.

For this exclusive series, Gok explored the world of disability with Di, a 54-year-old woman who is blind.  Gok wanted Di to get a better sense of her actual body shape through her sense of touch and asked SAFX to create a fiberglass body cast.

Paul and Laura spent a day with the wonderfully charismatic Di, life-casting her entire body. The cast also included her head and hands to complete Di’s entirety. It also gave an opportunity to experiment with the life-casting material Lifeform, a silicone life-casting supplied by Mouldlife: www.mouldlife.co.uk During the mirror sequence Gok introduces Di to her life-cast body in order that she could get a sense of her physical body proportions.

Lewis

Lewis

Title: ‘Lewis’

This sculpture challenges the identity of celebrity, by using the iconic image of Lewis Hamilton and faithfully recreating his biometrics. Although for most people the immediate familiarity has been lost, by enlarging the scale by six times, fragmenting the portrait and disguising its originality (the seam lines suggest a plaster cast taken from part of an ancient monument).  A degree of contemplation is inevitably required to fully understand this piece. (Material: Plaster)

New Horizons

Paul and Laura have recently become members of the London Group having been nominated for membership in 2009 by their long-time friend and fellow sculptor Professor Eric Moody.

Paul and Laura are very excited about becoming members of the London Group as this gives them the opportunity to exhibit there own work on a regular basis. They participated in the London Group last annual exhibition, exhibiting a new piece of work called ‘Lewis’ that explored the physical dynamics of celebrity recognition and scale.

Paul and Laura are the first joint members of the London Group representing the recognition of artists that permanently work in collaboration. The London Group is made up of over 80 artists’ painters, sculptors, photographers, video and installation artists etc. which makes for interesting and diverse exhibitions: www.thelondongroup.com