Mal Grieve

A short, melancholic tale of journey, adventure and impossible love, ‘Shadowbird’ uses rod puppets, shadow play and immersive light projections to tell of a young explorer who falls hopelessly in love with a silhouette. Inspired by the music of Tom Waits the story takes us into a drunken half memory, travelling through underwater-outer space to a land of shadows and moonlight reflections.

I created ‘Shadowbird’ originally to be performed with Swallow the sea Caravan Theatre during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the World Festival of puppetry in Charleville, France 2019. I was funded by Puppet animation Scotland and will be performing in their Edinburgh Manipulate puppet festival on the 1st of February 2020 then in the Raasay Gallery on my island home on the 8th of February.

‘Drawing breath’ is a series of puppets designed for ‘Drawing Routes’, an exhibition of work from MÓTI Collective held at the Pier Arts Centre from 10th Feb - 10th March 2018. The group were asked by the gallery to explore the art and act of drawing within our work.

By creating my own creatures, built to make a mark on their environment, I aim to translate movements of emotion and personality into marks and drawings. Like a snake in the sand or an insect eating furrows into the bark of the tree, my creatures leave an image behind them which tells a story. These experimental character designs are working towards a short film, a portrait of each species, documenting how they move and interact with the world and with each other.

'Closes' in two parts : Down to the nets, Up to the clouds.

Built from paper, wood and wire, 'Closes' is an interactive kinetic sculpture designed to celebrate 'Per Mare' in Stromness, Orkney, a celebration of 200 years since Stromness became a Burgh of Barony.

It was on show from the 23rd-27th July 2017 in Northlight Gallery, Stromness in 'The Street Uncoiled', an exhibition by the local art collective Móti of which I am a member.

By focusing on the distinctive shapes of Stromness and the often abstract spaces left between buildings, I aim to create a familiar miniature town for the viewer to explore.

The movement creates the illusion of entering into the scene as closes and fissures pass by your gaze drawing you to the central horizon.

Waiting

'Waiting' is a project that I took on for a group exhibition with Moti Collective, a group of artists working in Orkney. It consists of seven small figures in a miniature room, they appear to be waiting but there is no sign of what they are waiting for. Around the outside of the room are wooden handles and cranks that the viewer is invited to turn. Each handle powers one of the people in the room. The movements are small and mundane, a tapping foot, the turn of a head, a gentle rocking motion, but these small movements bring the characters to life and give a sense of their personalities. When you wait, time slows down, you notice the small things and they become big. What you are waiting for doesn't matter, just enjoy the moment.

Character profiles, model making and costume design for 4th year animation project.

For my main project in 4th year I wrote a story to base my work around. The story is set in the future, in a time when we have already achieved 'perfection' in humanoid robotics. We have created beings superior to ourselves that can do almost everything that humans can do but with intimidating power, speed and precision. The humans, disgusted by their sudden inferiority and lack of purpose, have destroyed these creatures, afraid of what they could do.

A lonely scientist left jobless after the destruction of his life's work sets about making a new kind of robot, an imperfect being whose thought processes mimic those of the flawed and unpredictable human brain. He creates this synthetic woman as a companion and designs her memory to only retain information that triggers some form of emotion or urgency. The information that is unnecessary is discarded alomst immediately but snippets of moments will stay in her memory indefinitely but will repeat and morph and degrade over time.

Another mechanism was installed to prevent humans from fearing her - when in recharging mode or 'simulated sleep' the thoughts and dreams of the robotic woman are projected from her brain onto the world around her. This means that any untoward thoughts she may have will not go unnoticed and any issues that might be causing her distress can be easily pin-pointed and rectified.

A Robotic woman is created with the body of a machine but with the emotions and desires of a human. Desperate for a child she builds herself a son but as she watches him dream she begins to question her own existance.

4th year animation project:

A robotic boy longs for a friend who will stay young with him forever. He assembles a companion from spare parts and household objects.

3rd year animation project based on the Savoy shopping centre, Glasgow.

Our Place was a5 week animation project that I was given in my 3rd year of Illustration at Glasgow School of Art. It is the story of two ladies and their connection to the savoy centre with its sense of community and place. It comes from my concerns aboutthe effect that the modernisation of such places could have upon these ladies and others like them.

3rd year shadow puppet show.

During my 3rd year at GSA we went on a class trip to Berlin and were asked to produce a piece of work based on a place that interested us in the city. As my place I chose the abandoned fairground, Spreepark, formerly part of the GDR-controlled East Berlin. I took some photographs when I visited but the eerie atmosphere was hard to show with a set of stills. What captured my attention was the very slow movement of the discarded rides as the wind caught them. I decided to create a slow moving shadow puppet show to give the viewer a sense of the atmosphere of the place. In this performance the forgotten rides slowly come to life one night and take on characters of their own before grinding to a halt once more in preparation for another day.

Development and final film poster design for Sally Potter's Orlando.

'Orlando' is a 1992 film based on Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando  : A Biography staring Tilda Swinton as the main protagonist Orlando, an immortal, androgynous character moving and changing through many centuries  of adventure. I wanted to capture this movement, this journey through time within my poster for the film and played around with layering and doubling up images. The setting and costume in the film is very grand and ornate and I tried to get a sense of this in the texture of the background and the style of the main lettering. For the type at the bottom I chose Carlson Old Face which Virginia Woolf used when she and Leonard set up the Hogarth press. It is suitably elegant but not too showy, screen printed in black and gold on A2 sugar paper.

Character design and model making for children's book cover.

The Wind in The Willows project was a book cover competition for Penguin Books. I wanted to create something different from the usual idyllicscene that the title conjures up. When I think of the book I think more of the battle between the main characters and the weasels. I wanted to show something of this energy in my cover so decided to leave out the gentle river and concentrate on creating personalities for the characters with movement and life.

Most of my characters are with the exception of mole and the weasels are fully articulated so I plan to use the models for a short animation project .