Xinyu Zhang

When I began to do the second task “Talking patterns”, I thought of an exhibition I saw in the kew garden during the summer holiday. The name is “When flowers dream”, which created a fantastic scene, using some macarons colours. I browsed the photos I took at that time. At first glance, I felt that a lot of things were piled up and looked similar, but when I zoom in these photos, I felt completely different. I observed a lot of details, such as small flowers made of plastic, small corals, etc. Repeatedly copy a separate thing into multiple patterns by rotating amplification.

During the painting, I used different materials to interpret it. For example, I used colour powder, because I observed that there were many plush balls in the exhibition, and I created a plush texture by fainting the colour powder with my hands. Flashing watercolours are also used in some pictures to interpret the dreamy fairy tales.

Overall , in this task, I think what touches me most is to form a new picture by zooming in and out , which is very interesting.

At first, I didn’t have any idea when I got the theme of “Talking colours”, but one day when my friend and I were shopping in East London, I happened to find a very special bar, but the name was “`Museum of curiosity”. After going there, I learned that the museum was hidden under the bar. From the narrow spiral staircase, I could see that there were some novel things in the cabinets, walls and ceilings in the exhibition halls of less than 20 square metres. From butterfly specimens, shell corals , bones of some animals, etc. But this basement is very small and dark, and the colours of the exhibits are monotonous, because there are many collections of toys and dolls. So I combined my childhood and thought that there were many such toys when I was a child, but they were all rich in colour, so I added some imaginary colours, such as gray, pink and purple, when painting, to bring the picture closer to the real colours of those toys in my heart.

At the same time, I also used different painting media. I made a collage combined with painting, and coffee-dyed sulphuric acid paper, which made me feel very suitable for the old retro atmosphere in the exhibition hall. At the same time, crayons and watercolour were used to express different textures in painting.

museum of curiosities