They are made of empty pill packets (blister packs) re-filled with 3D-printed, fake pills in the formation of pixilated portraits. The portraits are of of myself, my dad (a climate scientist) and my grandfather (a chemist and artist), to show how science and art has run through the generations of my family and to link to the idea of ageing caused by free radicals.

After all the prep of designing the pixelated portraits and ordering the 3D prints I assembled the portraits over a very intense two weeks which was filled with painkillers (both real and fake), paint fumes, and not much sleep – a process I thought worth sharing…

The original pills I based the 3d prints on:

These are super cheap Panamax pills which  I bought approx. 40 packets of gradually over a few months. I also experimented with capsule shaped pills but changed the designs for more uniform ‘pixels’. (Massive thanks to Clancy for collecting packets for me.. I’m keeping them all for next time!)

My dodgy measurements (which turned out wrong – and I learnt the valuable lesson of the importance of getting samples made).

The 3d print designs by Richard Blackwell:

Samples:

1000 pills in the one print file:

4000 fake pills sent to my house, I’m sure I’ll get checked by security when I next go overseas…

The portrait mock ups:

The amazing Dee helping me out with some late night manual labour:

Packets for one portrait, drying after being emptied and washed of paracetamol powder:

Testing colours and skin tones:

Spray painting the pills with Liquitex Spray paint:

Putting the fake pills back into the empty pill packets:

Slowly assembling the first portrait..

Pills ready to go for portrait no.2:

And for portrait no.3:

The three portraits, stacked:

Mounting the packets one by one onto alupanel with adhesive film and double-sided tape:

All three portraits mounted:

And packaged to be sent to London, for the Insight Radical exhibition (also including a series of my animations) which will be showing at Griffin Gallery from August 1 – 30, 2013, then will tour Australia.

Insight Radical and The Pill Portrats are featured in Issue 23 of Artist Profile, out now.

My work: Paper Pulse and Breathing World shown recently in SYNC! at Sheffer Gallery, Sydney.

I dream of that day, 2012

Via hyperallergic.

Stills from a series of animations for Insight Radical (check out a blog post on my work here):

3D printed pills, also for Insight Radical:

Some stills from my  new animation Tradewinds that is part of my PhD installation and will be shown as a work-in-progress in the group exhibition ‘Moving’ at Janet Clayton Gallery, April 17 to May 4:

My double-decker animation stand, so I could shoot two animations at once (one during the day and one at night):

A new map drawing:

Since moving out of my old studio and into a new one, we’re now building the motorised scrolls for my PhD installation at a construction site in Marrickville:

Follow me on Instagram!

Check out my review of one of my favourite artists, Sally Smart, here.

Sally Smart, Choreographing Collage (from The Pedagogical Puppet series), 2012, video still.

Sally Smart, I build my time, 2013, installation at BREENSPACE.

Jumaadi works in painting and shadow puppetry with an incredibly poetic insight into our emotional connection to landscape, language and love. It was a pleasure to get to know him and write about his work.

Jumaadi is represented by Watters Gallery and is currently showing in P(L)E(I)SURE PRINCIPLE: Indonesia contemporary works on paper at DNA Projects until December 15. His work can be seen online here.

Issue 21 of Artist Profile is on sale now.