Stitching

Stitching is a deeply unpleasant play about the breakdown of a relationship, and there is at least one point in which the audience gasped in horror. As it happens, the show had to be postponed, as the male lead (photographed here) had to drop out and ended up going into therapy as a result of the memories that the show's content dredged up.

The photo that I used was physically ripped up and placed on the scanner; the pieces were then excised from the background and reassembled in Photoshop. The only idea that I had initially was that the girl's eyes would be abnormally large. There is also a picture of a fossilised ammonite in there, and a random texture as the background.

I played around with good number of different ideas – some of them extremely, and colourfully, surreal – when I found that the simple approach was the best.

The metallic gold text shows the resurgent interest that I had in Dave McKean's work at the time, being reminiscent of much of his typeface-handling.