Hammer to Shape, Mouth Open
Hammer to Shape, Mouth Open is a changing artwork that will appear on the MIRROR homepage - where artists will be commissioned to make an image, icon, glyph, sigil or symbol of mouths and hammers.
Artists Conway & Young were commissioned to create a new artwork for the MIRROR website, as a way to disrupt and play with the formality of this space and to insert artists work and voices within the mainframe of the website.
Alongside creating two new artworks that take the form of gifs; Conway & Young were asked to write an ongoing, annual commission brief for students at Arts University Plymouth, where they will be invited to design their own mouths and hammers. The brief for students will be launch in October 2021.
Conway & Young chose a mouth in reference to the origin of the place name Plymouth (mouth of the Plym) and a hammer in reference to the Bertolt Brecht quote “Art is not a mirror for reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”
Gabriel East
Gabriel East is a mixed media illustrator focussing on characters and storytelling. Their practice is centered around exploring interactivity and inviting an audience to see the world as it is portrayed in their illustration. Through a mix of analogue and digital techniques, Gabriel’s work aims to reimagine the ordinary and communicate a fascination with the endless possibilities of magic, nature, and space.
'A majority of my work is focussed on exploration and the discovery of new, imagined worlds. As such, this hammer’s purpose is celestial. I chose to abstract the traditional shapes of a hammer and stack them upon each other as a tower to the sky. Perhaps it will forge something new.'
