This document provides potential ideas for an independent project focused on the theme of force. Some of the ideas involve distorting images of powerful people, combining artistic styles, manipulating portraits through aging or defying gravity, and illustrating concepts like good and evil or heaven and hell. Other suggestions relate to force and ideas of movement through sequences of images, music-inspired work, or object smashing. Additional ideas relate force to nature, environments, use of found objects, and sculptures that explore strength, energy, and exertion. The document lists many artists whose work relates in some way to these themes of force that could provide inspiration.

1. Force GCSE Independent Project

2. Ideas
• Strength Constrain Control
• Energy Influence Convince
• Effort Resist Stress
• Speed Push Friction
• Power Tension Exerton

3. People
Potential Ideas:
Distort images of powerful people, make them grotesque.
Draw people who are important to you but not necessarily anyone else.
Combine the styles of two artists. (see Glenn Brown- not in the PP but worth a look
anyway).
Digitally manipulate a portrait to age the person in the image.
Create portraits in the style of Jenny Saville using the thick, impasto paint technique.
Create work that defies gravity- use powerful magnets. (see the artist Takis- not in the PP)
Create distorted portraits. Eg Tado Cern.

4. Bill Viola
Emotional force / Visual art / Life and Death

5. Bill Viola

6. Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon-Explores the “Human Condition” in his work. -Paintings portray
an existentialist outlook on life. Graphic and emotionally raw style of painting

7. Edvard Munch

8. Andy Warhol

9. Lucian Freud

10. Jenny Saville

11. Shepard Fairey
Forceful/Powerful imagery

12. Sam Taylor Wood
Natural/unnatural forces/gravity

13. Tado Cern

14. Henrietta Harris

15. Ives Klein

16. Propaganda/Political responses
Potential Ideas:
Juxtapose political pictures with quotes that support or contradict the image.
Create your own images of propaganda about an issue of your choice.
Collage images together in a way that contradicts their original meaning.
Contradiction of violent extremism and religion.
Paint a portrait in a traditional style ( including the gold frame) of someone with an
extreme, even unpleasant appearance.
Create work that illustrates Heaven and Hell, the forces of good and evil.
Use problems you encounter as inspiration for your work- what do you find difficult or
challenging?

17. Force of influence

18. Barbara Kruger

19. Alexander Rodchenko

20. Shirin Neshat

21. Movement
Potential Ideas:
Translate Lichtenstein’s work into three dimensions.
Take photographs of different parts of a movement and layer them together. Use the
strobe in photography…?
Inspired by Muybridge’s sequence of movement images but incorporate mechanical
objects.
Represent a sequence of movements in a series of more cartoon like images.
Create work from Music- think carefully about colour, shape and mark making.
Photograph and object smashing. If the object was filled with paint it would also make
it’s own painting.
Spinning disc paintings: Damian Hirst & Alfons Schilling
Dirk Skreber inspired images on skateboards.

22. Edward Muybridge
Dirk Skreber

23. Dirk Skreber
Sculptures based upon the theme of FORCE, speed, gravity, exertion,
energy and strength

24. Roy Lichtenstein

25. Pablo Picasso

26. Balla

27. Gino Severini

28. Jackson Pollock

29. Brice Marden
Energy and movement in painting

30. Places/Environment
Potential Ideas:
View from windows- like Pericoli but blurred like Barnes.
Create abstract paintings / drawings combining locations from around the world.
Create lego buildings or more realistic buildings, photograph them from a low
perspective so that they appear bigger.
Create paintings of the new architecture in London in a traditional way. Eg. The
Gherkin in the style of Constable.
Put old elements on modern buildings eg thatched roof, slatted windows etc.
Create work based on the busy streets of London.
Recreate Boyle Family project in Muswell Hill.
Combine two very different buildings or environments.
Like Borja Bonaque but incorporating trees- an opposite type of place.
Make a model of a building that has the qualities of Feng Dakang’s paintings out of
fragile, translucent materials. Make it appear fragile and precarious.

31. Power plants, dams, wind turbines represent physical force and
strength created within them.
Visit the Thames barriers or windmill farms

32. Jeanette Barnes

33. Feng Dakang

34. Boyle Family

35. Borja Bonaque

36. John Piper

37. Charles Sheeler

38. Sarah Morris

39. Matteo Pericoli

40. Nature
Potential Ideas:
Recreate Hokusai’ wave by painting with hand prints / fingers etc.
Work from awe inspiring locations- include figures that illustrate the enormity of the
chosen places.
Respond to the work of Fay Goodwin and photograph stages of deforestation. Have as
a sequence or layer.
In response to Gabriel Dawe- make images of nature from string and smaller objects.
In response to Jen Stark, layer coloured translucent materials to create a similar effect.
Look at the patterns that appear in nature (spirals, tessellations, helixes etc) recreate
theses in man-made materials.
Create work that illustrates the damage man inflicts on the environment.
Crack through a wall or floor in north wing. (Use trompe l’oiel rather than actually
doing it!)
Bring Nature inside…? Moss on walls, watercress, grass seed…. Alter a dolls house with
growing things!

41. Doris Salcedo
Force of nature Earthquakes, stress...Cracks

42. Fay Godwin
Forces of nature

43. Turner

44. Maggi Hambling

45. Katsushika Hokusai

46. Gabriel Dawe
Dawe began creating artwork using techniques that were considered women's work by many of
Mexico City's inhabitants. Inspired by the creations of Anish Kapoor and Victor Vasarely, Dawe's work
developed into huge, viewer absorbing installations made from thousands upon thousands of different
colour threads and taking up to 140 hours and four to five weeks to create

47. Irene Anton
Installations are often inspired by nature and natural shapes and
structures, like for example this network made of tights

48. Jen Stark
Jen Stark is a contemporary artist whose majority of work involves creating paper
sculptures. She also works with drawing and animation. Her work draws inspiration from
microscopic patterns in nature

49. Objects/use of found objects
Potential Ideas:
Cut into or paint each page of a newspaper or magazine. (Like Georgia Russell and
Mimmo Rotello)
Cut into book covers so that the illustrations come to life and ‘act out’ the story.
Shred materials, Eg. Plastic bags, knit, weave or combine them to make a completely
different object.
Upside down cash register- based on Rebecca Horn. Create sculpture that falls out of
itself!
Response to Ai Wei Wei- break beautiful objects, piece them back together in a new
configuration or paint a slogan or known brand across them.
Spray paint a plant giving it a fake appearance, create drawings from this.
Suspend an object or several to make it appear as if they have exploded.
Recreate a natural object in a different scale and media.

50. Cornelia Parker
floating objects,defying force of gravity

51. Jean Blackburn
Jean Blackburn creates ingenious sculptures by deconstructing
everyday household items: chairs, tables, chests of drawers,
beds and related objects. Using the materials from the
deconstructed objects, Blackburns makes elaborate
constructions that undermine the basic utilitarian nature of the
object. In addition to the deconstructed household objects,
Blackburn fabricates ceramic pieces with her signature holes.

52. Suzy Lelievre

53. Cara Barer

54. Georgia Russell

55. Bill Woodrow

56. Rebecca Horn

57. Jean Tingueley

58. Robert Rauschenberg

59. Mimmo Rotella

60. Nnenna Okore

61. Karla Black

62. Ernesto Neto