This is the final major piece of costume painting/design work I will do for this stage of the development process. It is a revisitation of the idea used for the Figure of Forms and features several final revisions to that design – this is the one that I wish to produce physically, and like the ‘modern primitive’ style designs shown earlier will be developed not through more painting but through usage of a constructed suit.

This figure’s form consists of the humanoid black shape making up the Figure of Forms, but most of, if not all, of that designs’ various other components have been replaced – either by gold-plated variants or by new objects altogether, which makes it look more solid, less of a ‘mix’ of components and ties the whole figure together in a statuesque, uniform style which makes it look not unlike a gladiator or a godlike figure.

This figure is not supposed to deliberately copy the bauhaus style by which it is inspired, but is instead supposed to represent the mentality of the age from which it came – that of efficiency, beauty, utopian design pointing towards a golden future of technology and prosperity. Similarly, the ‘modern primitive’ style designs are simply a ‘past’ figure – not any particular culture or person, but more act as a figural, humanoid representation of a bygone age, born in the present day, lost in an age in which it doesn’t belong.

This section applies after time was spent constructing and photographing the first versions of the costumes.
I have revised the Figure of Forms into this design because my motives and direction for these costumes has changed. My development had no single clear direction before, I wanted to simply use the designs as tools to develop my ideas, but now I have a concrete direction for both the modern primitive figures and this golden figure which will be elaborated on in due course.

I always wanted there to be a degree of spontaneity to the tribal-like costumes representing a primitive people, so decided that the mannequin esque, doll-like futurist suit needed more development. I since sidelined the process on the primitive costumes, but now return to them to record their creation.

Initially, I had intended for the primitive suit to be made in the style of traditional historical dress – African, Indian, Asian or other – and had decided that the mask would be what needed the most work.  However, soon after drawing these designs, lectures on Colonialism, Imperialism and Orientalism began to reappear in my mind, and I became aware of the fact I could be seen as trivialising, parodying or stereotyping a whole culture by using a depiction of a real figure as a representation of a ‘primitive’ man. I do not want to represent Africa or any of the other countries specifically, I simply wanted to represent the idea of a ‘past’ man, humans from another era of our history from which we have since developed and changed.

The desire to get away from raising myself, and our present cultures above and beyond these old cultures became more prominent in my thought process and I began to look at ways to imply our past without explicitly creating a controversial gap between a modern and an old culture. I looked at our current culture – how might someone purposefully revisit our past today with the limited resources of old – and how might I immerse myself in our past for the sake of my film?

Thus, the designs above were created. Utilising a mix of found objects, like dumped cardboard, sheep bones and sticks with synthetic materials like paints and plastic netting, I have designed a kind of ‘modern primitive’ figure – born in the 21st century but would not look too out of place earlier in our history. These men wear protective garments – cardboard – crudely painted in camouflage and mask patterns – as well as camouflage netting and basic folded sheets of cloth for underclothing to protect them from the wilds from which they presumably came. For their crudely painted masks, I was inspired by the mask like paintings of Marlene Dumas, and will write more candidly about her influence soon. I envisioned several different appearances of these men; I might try to create several costumes for this purpose – to give them a more evident ‘tribe’ or culture. These designs are satisfactory for now, I suspect future developments will come from trying to bring them into physical reality and in subsequent work.