2020

Dhruv Satpute

Hello! My name is Dhruv Satpute. My work involves image-making and research with, at present, a focus on ecologies and ecological thinking. I am currently based in Glasgow.

How do you draw a joke?

The objects and events we observe around us—our foreground—exist upon an infinite canvas of context and assumed knowledge which fills our periphery—our background.

The nature of a joke is to play with these foregrounds and backgrounds, compelling its audience to reconsider and reorganise their worldview.

This project began as a thesis and culminated with a digital stop motion animation of a Bob-Ross-style scene which attempts to mirror and make clear the implicit foreground-background narrative of a joke as it is told.

Unnature

We tend to think of ourselves and the human-made objects, structures and systems around us as separate from what we consider to be ‘nature’.

This project allowed me to explore the delineation between natural and unnatural through an illustrative and editorial investigation into bonsai practice.

I applied the various aesthetic rules of bonsai to the human body using ink made from the flower petals of a Satsuki azalea shrub in my garden.

The transcription of a conversation between myself and Ian Young—one of the UK's leading bonsai practitioners—about the relationship between bonsai and ideas of nature formed the typographic element of the book.

Fashioning a circular future

This project was a response to an RSA Student Design Awards animation brief in which I was provided with a brief audio segment.

I used plasticine, fabric, shoes and a scanner to create a short stop motion animation.

Dhruv Satpute

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