A trip to the circus

No I did not go to the circus, but I did go to a museum about the circus' art.

The assignment was to visit the museum of everything and it was hard to get there, but after asking for directions from complete strangers I succeeded to getting there.

When I arrived, I was baffled to what I was seeing. Colourful hallways, clown statues, circus posters and funny mirrors? I thought I was in some sort of fun house. But through some careful observing, I started to gain interest to this exhibition. Carl Hammer owns this entire gallery.

To me, the theme to this gallery was the circus after seeing the large banners of freak shows and outrageous stunts. The art style was quite childish in a way, but I guess that was what they were aiming for. Fred G. Johnson and Snap Wyaat made these posters. Sadly, was not able to read much more about them. Don't ask why... Many of the small posters were made using collage techniques and screen-printing. I found it quite clever how they manipulated the images into creating these posters. Also, the typography they used were bold and quite colourful, which really appeals to children. So in a way, these posters use the image and text technique, which in fact, we are studied in VCT on the first day.

But what I thought was the best part in the museum was Potter’s work. Potter was the village taxidermist and not only does he stuff dead animals but he makes dioramas out of them as well. My favourite one out of all of his work would have to be his animatic diorama of two rats boxing. He made several dioramas with the same characters but in different position creating a sort of short movie. I even made a few sketches of some of his dioramas. (Note: will update images soon). Also, Potter had some of the weirdest looking animals, like a lamb with two faces and one that had two bodies and one head! ...Freaky… David Price, one of the workers, told me that farmers actually found these weird animals the way they are before he stuffed…. I would freak out if I saw something like that…