O'ahu by based upon

based upon | Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ahu

O’ahu The making of the artwork

O’ahu First published June 2012 by Based Upon Books, 8–12 Creekside, London se8 3dx, Great Britain isbn 978 1 909011 04 5 All images © Based Upon 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher.

based upon | books

Contents

| 7 – 9 | 10 – 31

| 32 – 68

| 70 – 88 | 70 – 88

Introduction | Alex Welch —

Journey

—

Composition —

Textural Landscape —

Earth, Sea, Sky —

Introduction

Bleary eyed, late at night, speeding down the motorway, the airport and 24hrs of travel became a small spot in the rear view mirror. My first impression of Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ahu was not the tropical island oasis I had pictured. In the dark of night I could have been on the outskirts of any American town. The light told a different story. I awoke to sunrise across the Pacific, with colours of purple and orange unlike any I have seen anywhere in the world. Seven days of photography and casting followed in the most inspiring landscape I have ever visited. We are very grateful to our client for inviting us to create this work. They had briefed us to create an artwork for their London home that would remind them of their roots in Hawaii. The work stands at 2m x 8m in varying tones of metals and resins. As I write this, the work is finally complete and installed and will be unveiled in the morning. In the coming days they will see it for the first timeâ&#x20AC;Ś Alex Welch Based Upon co-founder

Journey

In seven days we clambered the island through volcanic landscapes at O’ahu’s Southern tip, via Jurassic rainforest on the Eastern side, into the North Shore with its majestic waves and then the red earth of the islands centre. We took casts along the way, leaving our signature ‘blue spots’ on lavaflow, beneath a waterfall, on Taro leaves and Banyan trees. By the end of the week we had bags of moulds and natural ephemera and a hard drive of macro photography carefully documenting the islands textures and natural marks.

Composition

The composition for this work visually illustrates our journey around Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ahu marking out some of the key locations and content gathered, creating a map of our experience. The key imagery was refined and organised according to the chronological journey we made. Reviewing the content in this way highlighted the diversity of landscape and micro climates across the island. Direct correlations also became visible between textures, patterns and their repetition at varying scales. As one ascends or descends the staircase, the journey is recreated through the relevant textural marks fading into one another. The three craters local to the clients residence are: 01. The Punch Bowl 02. Diamond Head 03. Koko Head. These three points have been rotated 90 degrees to create a portrait composition that works with the verticality of the space the artwork is to be hung.

01 01

03 03

Textural Landscape

A key theme that emerged from our research was one of repetition at varying scales. When taken out of context it was often difficult to determine at what scale a photograph had been taken; microcosm or macrocosm. This is illustrated by the tiny rock pool and large volcanic crater shown on the following pages. Within the composition, three resin craters/rock pools penetrate an abstract geological metal surface. From a distance the surface looks like an exposed rock face of strata or topographical landscape of Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ahu. On closer inspection the surface is actually subtle textural marks taken from our collected content. The textures merge into each other, playing with the repetition of pattern in differing scales and the similarities of the textures. The ridge of the mountain range turns into the veins of a Taro leaf and then into the texture of bark and so forth. The locations of the different textures within the composition are dictated by the point in our journey from where they were taken.

Earth, Sea, Sky

Inspired by the rock pool’s reflecting the sky, the work included three resin craters that would act as windows, creating abstract interpretations of the earth, sea and sky. The areas around the craters were formed from the natural terrain of the volcano’s landscape fading into the other textural marks that we documented and collected. The earth includes samples of red soil, leaves and seed pods that we carried home. The sea was about recreating the vivid blues we had observed, the motion of the waves and using the beaches’ sand to create a crust beneath the ocean’s surface. The sky challenged us to capture the intangible colours we had witnessed at dawn and sunset, and include a constellation of the night sky referenced as paint splashes frozen within resin.