Helen Marshall

The Big Picture - Audiences Central - The West Midlands - 2008

The Big Picture was a commission from Audiences Central funded by the Arts Council in The West Midlands. The record-breaking work of art included 112, 896 photos, and measured 857.3m2. It was unveiled outside Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum at Millennium Point. The image selected for the final mosaic was from the thousands of submissions. Taken in 1926, it is a portrait of 17 year old Arthur James Bunce from Tipton in the Black Country, training as an amateur boxer. Helen Marshall was responsible for overseeing the creative direction and physical construction of the final work and the selection of the final image. She was particularly drawn to the fact it also appeared as a tattoo on the grandson's back. She worked with photo mosaic specialists PollyTiles and Blocwork to technically realise the enormous image made up of photographs submitted by the public.