The fingers and the reliquary are all seemingly identical with their golden finish and intricacy. However, only 4 of these 16 were hand sculpted whilst the rest are perfect casts in plaster. This is a comment on the illegitimacy of at least three of these fingers. I wonder how St Thomas could have had 4 right index fingers. This piece had the potential to have quite a humorous description paired with it.

As morbid as it might seem, I think that the direction that Trump is heading in can only end in disaster. I would imagine an upheaval of Muslims to plot against Trump if he were to come into power. As an extreme interpretation of this, I would imagine Muslims to take Trumps supposed faith in Christianity, and apply this to his death; crucifixion.

Although extremely controversial, I think that I've managed to make this piece far more light hearted and ultimately funnier with my use of captions (above). The piece is supposed to be a metaphor for the extreme repercussions that are very likely to occur if Donald Trump were to come into power. His blind racism, misogyny and arrogance will seal his fate in this life or the next. 

After much research into the shroud of Turin, there was no final explanation as to how the image of Christ was transferred onto the piece of cloth; yet the shroud is still worthy of veneration. Ray Downing and his research team hoped to 3-dimentionalize the image of Christ, which is essentially what I am trying to convey. As I found from my researcher, the shroud was carbon dated as being only 700 years old, however this cloth, containing photo negative information, would be far too advanced to be a medieval forgery. There was also no trace of pigment on the cloth when the microfibers were tested. The only explaination that was humoured was that Christ's body must have been glowing/radiating when he came back to life; this would have apparently caused a photo negative to transfer onto the cloth. 

There was a wiped out form of Christianity that was touched upon in my research; the Nostics/Heritons. They believed that humans cannot see the world in its true 3 dimensions; they suggest that there is an invisible universe. This could correspond with the shroud as it appears to have a hidden 3rd dimension inside due to the distorted contours in the flat cloth; like a hologram? Perhaps the shroud is a metaphor for the universe as heaven is also a hidden universe. 

I've tried two stop motion animations; one zoomed in on the face and one with all 8 faces. I think that the zoomed in version looks far better as you are focused on one face; with the other you can see all 8 faces transitioning and it is rather overwhelming. 

In accordance with my Saint Thomas research, I really wanted to go further with this idea of repetition and replication. After replicating my photographs of the relics and reliquary, I decided to almost wallpaper the wall with the images. The ostentatiousness of Catholic decoration is present in this piece as I have made the fingers appear as if emerging out from the corner of the wall, sprawling out and encroaching on the observer, will it stop? The squared pattern looks almost like pixels, an illumination that is repeated to build up an image. Again this strange idea of juxtaposing the modern with the traditional is present here.

The original image (indiviual print) was heavily inspired by Kris Kuksi's photographs of his intricate sculptures. However, the replication of them has created a whole new dimension to the piece. The relics and the reliquary's are supposed to look as if floating with their ethereal significance. The repetition is a statement on the aura and authenticity of the relics themselves. If several churches claim to obtain the same relic how can they be legitimate? I am just playfully poking fun at the obsurdity of this concept of worshiping  dead body part that only has a 1 in 4 chance of being the real relic. 

If I am going to make Donald Trump into a relic, then I need to have records of his time as a 'saint', in the most ironic way possible. I thought that mixing topical events in the news with the ancient art of stain glass windows; kind of like a news report through art. I chose to depict the recent story of Donald Trumps argument with the Pope. The pope questioned Trumps Christianity, as he announces his plans to build a wall across the border of Mexico,  by saying that he should be building bridges, not walls! Trump comes back asking why the pope should be entitled to have a wall around his Vatican City. This is quite an interesting debate as both have valid points. I do not think that Trump is right in what he hopes to acheive, by any means, however he does raise the valid point, why should the pope be allowed to have a wall around his city? Because it is holy and sacred land? Or just because tradition has overruled modern day reason? 

Trump assumes that anyone migrating from Mexico are criminals and rapists, it would seem that he has little faith in the good of humanity. I have depicted Trump as pointing his little fingers at the pope as he stands in front of his 'Great Wall of Mexico'. The pope is holding out his staff, which divides the two and raises his hand in an attempt to stop Trump. The Pope stands infront of his bridge with waters flowing around him. I think that this visual representation of the news has quite effectively gaged the personalities of the two men involved; Trump aggressively pointing his finger, and the pope peacefully trying to stop the madness. 

I didn't have any glass paint at hand, so used some acrylic. This looks fine when there is no light shone through it, but that is the point of a stain glass window of course. There is quite an interesting texture to the paint and the small scale makes the piece provides a sense of vulnerability. The piece is painted onto a sheet of glass inside a frame, the fragility of the glass is a statement about Donald Trumps current political position; if he is elected into power, the glass will surely smash. 

As my Donald Trump phenakistoscope animation worked so well, I thought about trying something a bit more complex. And after seeing the trailer for the film Loving Vincent I thought that painting each frame of the animation on a small scale, would make a rather beautiful animation. I first looked for images of Christ so that I could guess the facial reconstruction from the relic, shroud of Christ. 

I then had to fill in the gaps of the development of Christs face as I had to make the piece 8 frames long for it to work. I began by cutting a circle of card and, like the the first phenakistoscope, I used a protractor to divide the circle into 8 equal segments. In the first segment, I sketched out an outline of the shroud of Turin. 

Using some hooks attached to the top of my studio space, I began trying to hang my little sculptures from fishing wire in the hopes of making them appear as if floating. This idea is mostly inspired by the impressively intricate works by Kris Kuksi. The plan is to have ethereal looking relics floating with transcendence.

Still sticking with the zoetrope idea, I thought I'd move onto something a tad easier/less time consuming; a 2D zoetrope! This meant be free to draw any design I like without having to sculpt it from scratch, and I can easily replicate them to be identical (using tracing paper). 

I drew out my first Donald Trump then traced over it with tracing paper and moved the same drawing over to the next segment, only changing the position of the arm. The idea is that the arm will move up and down like a pointing finger. 

33RPM is definitely the best of the three speeds as the image is the clearest and you can see the motion that I am trying to create. Although my zoetrope has worked fairly well, I still this that there could be a better way to record the moment that I'm trying to achieve. Perhaps stop motion? Stop motion would allow me to record the hands without having to turn off the lights and use a strobe.