Mixed media artist creates celebrity portraits from scrapped car parts

Joe Swash, Chris Kamara and Angela Barnes have all been immortalised – with portraits made entirely of scrapped car parts.

Mixed-media artist David Badcock has created the three familiar faces using only materials which are destined for the scrapheap.

The industrial artist dedicated over 110 hours, skilfully repurposing 100kg of used parts from five scrapped cars, incorporating more than 1,000 individual nuts and bolts. By using a car bonnet as a canvas, the industrial artist masterfully crafted striking likenesses of the three TV stars, each measuring 1.2m by 1.5m.

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Materials used to bring the portraits to life included tyres, steering wheels, broken lights, body metal and thousands of nuts and bolts.

David was challenged to create the sculptures by Dave and UKTV Play to mark the launch of its new series, World’s Most Dangerous Roads – in which all three celebs star - from February 18 at 8pm.

He said: “The challenge of turning discarded car parts into celebrity portraits was a dream commission which allowed me to blend my love of art and cars and I’m delighted with the final results.”

Angela Barnes said: “Having your likeness crafted from car parts is quite something, though it's more flattering than them using the back end of a bus. David has managed to capture the essence of each of us using scrap car parts – that's just extraordinary.

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"It was so much fun being part of this project, and now I can't wait for the world to see what we got up to on our adventures on the upcoming series."

Cherie Hall, Dave and UKTV Play channel director, said: "Our three car-part portraits set the scene for our most entertaining series of World’s Most Dangerous Roads yet. Once again, our participating celebrities will tackle the treachery and laugh in the face of danger as they get behind the wheel for some of the world’s trickiest driving challenges.”

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