Taking inspiration from the work of Todd McLellan

Todd McLellan is a Canadian artist and his project labelled 'Things Come Apart' is one that has really intrigued me. This is a project in which McLellan dismantles objects before carefully arranging them in ways that allow us to see the components of an everyday object.

This an example of one of McLellan's piece in which he has carefully taken apart a pen to show all the components of the object. He has also neatly arranged them which helps making the artist's work look professional. The overall effect of what McLellan is doing is that it helps us see objects in a different light because usually a pen is just a pen however showing all these different parts shows us that in reality, it has different foundations that make it up.

This is another example of McLellan's pieces from his 'Things Come Apart' project in which he has dismantled a phone. What I admire about this piece is that we are able to see various different items that many would not even know where inside the phone such as the different screws and bolts that hold the whole thing together. I am yet to recognise whether there is any pattern in which McLellan orders the components however he does it in such a manner that makes his work looks so appealing and professional.

After witnessing McLellan's work, I was really intrigued to try creating some work similar to the artists however I wanted to add my own twist instead of trying to fully replicate it.

This is a piece I created where I attempted to stick to McLellan's style. Within this I took apart a calculator into individual parts and arranged them in an order I thought was most effective. On reflection, there would be a lot I would change if doing this again. The lighting was poor and I relied wholly on the light from outside. Due to this it has created various shadows facing the light that I actually believe takes the distraction away from the components of the calculator. Also on reflection, I am quite disappointed with the arrangement of the pieces as they're a bit all over the place and not exactly straight therefore the professional look is lacking.

After struggling with the first set of images, I tried again using my own twist. With this, using a hammer I smashed the phone into pieces to create an effect that made it looked like it had been naturally dropped rather than manually taken apart. To add to this, rather than placing the components on a plain white background, I placed it on a rock flooring which with the edition of a few adjustments on Photoshop, I believe it gives it a really rough and broken feel. On reflection, the only thing I would potentially change is to have separated the phone parts into more pieces as there is only five parts whereas some of McLellan's pieces can contain hundreds of pieces.

Other images from shoot:

https://uk.pinterest.com/burdettolly/a2-photography-everyday-objects-todd-mclellan/