The Melt Down

By Courtney Newman

Nothing gold can stay, not the sunshine in the day or the rainbow after the rain; not the battery on your phone, your bank account after pay day or your favourite TV show, not the best holiday you have ever been on or an ice cream on a hot Summer’s day. Things end, they disappear, they degrade, they’re consumed and sometimes they even melt.

Melting Point: the point at which substances break free of their rigid structures and become liquids. But what if that didn’t mean the end? What if it was a new beginning? What if we could create something from this degradation? Something we could enjoy? If we simply look at the idea of melting, when heat is applied to a substance we can use it as something to watch and observe, to advertise or communicate a message through photography, sculpture and illustration.

One artist to use this technique was Nele Azevedo, who in August 2014, created the Minimum Monument in Birmingham, an exhibition that lasted only a few hours of the day, which commemorated the centenary of the First World War [9]. Azevedo created 5000 miniature anonymous human ice sculptures, with no distinct features. Each of these represented the everyday person, who made sacrifices for their country in WWI. As each figure melted, it represented a life lost in the war. The people of Birmingham gathered to reflect, remember and place a sculpture at the stairs of the exhibition. But within a few hours the entire monument had disappeared, showing that you don’t always need a permanent, physical sculpture to celebrate such a significant time in the world [10].

The idea of melting is also presented in a number of advertisements to communicate messages about issues such as global warming. Wall’s Ice Cream, 2011, use the issue of melting ice to create awareness of the idea of having a global shortage of ice cream [11].

This was done through a series of print advertisements, which showed photographs of empty ice cream cones and cups to encourage people to do something about global warming before we run out of the many great things in the world, like ice cream. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 2012, similarly addressed this issue through a print advertisement of the Earth represented as an ice cream, melting down the sides of a cone [12].

This approach can also be used as a fun and creative way to entertain and entice people. A great example of this is Glue Society’s melting ice cream truck sculpture titled, Hot with a chance of late storm, which appeared in 2006 as a part of Sculpture by the Sea in Sydney [13]. The Mr Whippy Van, made from steel, sandstone and limestone, played a distorted Greensleeves refrain and was completed with a giant lifesaver cap. Melting can be used to represent a range of different issues, events, memories and phenomena. For my own interpretation of melting, I have created illustrations and photographic pieces that remind us of a sweltering hot Summer’s day, with melting ice creams, distorted photographs of people enjoying a day out in the sun and a representation of how most people feel on these Summer’s days. Summer doesn’t last forever, you make the most of it, even that tragic time you dropped a fresh scoop of ice cream on the sweltering hot ground, which was comparable to a few other horrors.

Nothing gold can stay, but that doesn’t always mean the end as we can put to use the degradation of these objects or foods that we enjoyed to give objects new lives that we can use to communicate, savour and remember what was

[9] Hippodrome Plus presents Minimum Monument. (2016). YouTube. Retrieved 30 August 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcRinFr4qpI

[10] WW1 ice memorial melts in Birmingham. (2016). YouTube. Retrieved 30 August 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0uXIjAbw7Y

[11] Behance. (2016). Behance.net. Retrieved 30 August 2016, from https://www.behance.net/gallery/1682308/Walls-Ice-Cream-Global-Warming-Ads

[12] Faisal, M. (2016). 65+ Most Creative WWF Global Climate Change ADs. Graphicdesignjunction.com. Retrieved 30 August 2016, from http://graphicdesignjunction.com/2010/07/40-most-creative-wwf-global-climate-change-ads/

[13] Melting Ice Cream Truck by the Glue Society. (2012). Colossal. Retrieved 30 August 2016, from http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/06/melting-ice-cream-truck-by-the-glue-society/