As you'll know if you've checked out our current creative opportunities, Bombay Sapphire want to see how everyday objects, sounds and experiences inspire your artwork.
Does people-watching inspire you to get creative?
Do you have a muse – human (like your Gran), animal (that particularly cheeky squirrel in the park), or spiritual (Beyoncé)?
Does exploring textures and colour pallets in old fashion magazines help you to get your ideas down on canvas? Do you feel a stirring when you look at architecture? Does a certain song or album take you somewhere creative?
For your chance to be selected and win £1000, tell us about the everyday inspo that informs your amazing creative work (it can be anything!) with your submission for Saw This, Made This.
To help get you started, we’ve cherry-picked some of our favourite examples of creatives spotting the untapped potential in an everyday situation, and crafting it into otherworldly art.
1. Artist: Fiona Apple
Inspiration: Ambient noise and 'Found Sound' (ie. regular daily noises the artist heard around her)
Art: Fetch The Bolt Cutters, Album
Apple’s pitch-perfect album Fetch the Bolt Cutters helped some of us through the worst of the pandemic when it was released in April 2020. Recorded in part at home with minimal equipment, the album credits her dogs Leo, Alfie, Maddie, Little and Mercy with ‘backing barks” and ‘collar jangles and thrashing’ on various tracks. This isn’t the first time Apple has used found sound (or ‘musique concrète’ if you’re feeling fancy). While recording Werewolf, the recording picked up the sound effects from a battle scene in a movie that played in the background. Unable to obtain permission to use the film’s soundtrack, Apple spent the next year trying to recreate the sound. Upon hearing schoolchildren playing during breaktime one morning, she rushed out with her recording equipment to capture the sound. Listen above at the 2.10 mark.
2. Artists: Probably... hundreds?
Inspiration: The London Underground
Art: Bags, furniture, accessories, music, images, poems...
It’s said that travel is a marvellous source of inspiration, and it turns out that as far as the muse is concerned, a one-stop-hop on the metro can be just as effective as a week in the Seychelles.
The London Transport Museum Shop features a wealth of beautifully-made items inspired by the colours and designs of the London Underground stations, including blankets in the design of the seat coverings on the District line, canvas bags based on the tiles in permanently closed tube stops, and even furniture made from repurposed station signage.
3. Artist: Katie Paterson
Inspiration: Space
Art: A candle that smells like outer space
Scottish artist Katie Paterson worked with scientists, researchers and astronauts to assign a signature fragrance to every point of the journey from Earth to outer space, through the clouds and the stratosphere, past the moon and each of the planets, finishing in a black hole.
The candle burns for 12 hours and is formed of layers, each containing a unique perfume. Earth smells like a lush, green forest. The moon smells of burnt gunpowder. Mars smells like an old penny. That ammonia smell? That’s Jupiter.
4. Artist: Lemn Sissay
Inspiration: Weather
Art: A poem made into a mural
Lemn’s Sissay poem RAIN, an ode to Manchester’s reliably unreliable weather, is written on an enormous mural on the side of a take-away on the city’s Oxford Road. The letters are spaced out in vertical rows as haphazard as raindrops in a visual echo of the poem’s theme. You can see it and listen to him read it, here.
5. Artist: Heston Blumenthal and team
Inspiration: The seaside
Art: Experimental food and dining experience
View this post on Instagram
'The Sound of the Sea' was a multi-sensory signature dish at Heston Blumenthal's fancy-pants restaurant, Fat Duck. A dish of sashimi, tapioca ‘sand’ and sea foam was served with a conch shell containing an iPod. Diners would listen to the sound of waves crashing and seagulls flying overhead as they enjoyed their meal.
Feeling suitably inspired? Crack on and send us your submissions!
Check out more juicy briefs right here at Talenthouse.
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Tell us what you think!