Kara Baldwin

Cartoon Logic comprises two separate bodies of work, Flocking Seagulls and Chicken Strip, that explore varying ways video, drawing, sculpture and installation can be used to articulate and delineate the relationship between a viewers’ expectation and incongruous pairings of objects, images and spaces. The project explores different modes of cognitive incongruity including contextual isolation, amplification, repetition, broken expectation, disrupted familiarity, humour, connotation and contradiction, to question existing social constructs and preconceived ideas that affect viewers’ responses to stimuli and its meaning.

Flocking Seagulls is an installation of over 1000 drawings of seagulls. Seagulls exist on all continents and alongside numerous cultures. They are often either ignored or become a subject of ridicule due to being anthropomorphised with negative associations. Flocking Seagulls exaggerates these assumed personality traits, showing individuals as mass, questioning how ridicule and humour can unconsciously define social conduct.

Chicken Strip is a five-minute looped projection. The single shot, sustained imagery with soft musical accompaniment reveals how a familiar, quotidian scenario can slowly become clinical, abstract and abject through duration. Chicken Strip reveals how seemingly banal actions can have multiple potential responses. What may initially be considered funny ‘haha’, becomes funny ‘strange’, revealing how reactions to incongruous material can form new perspectives.