0 Comments

Upon the realisation of my unconscious reluctance to disfigure family photos, I decided to consciously alter them, either by ripping them up or painting over them. This is something seen in Gerhard Richter’s work.


0 Comments

It became apparent to me that I am very reluctant to ruin the photos of my family: photos of people that are particularly significant to me. We see this in ‘Stolen Journey’ as I have kept the pictures whole, however this could be argued as the process of printing the pictures onto the book pages allowed them to be manipulated by the text. In other works of mine, such as ‘Wallpaper Nostalgia’ (Fig 7), ‘Lucky Man I & II’ (Fig 8 & 9), and ‘Unknown Best friends’ (Fig 10) it is obvious that I am unable to alter the images, keeping them as centrepieces. Additionally, I have also drawn frames round the images. This perhaps enhances the fact that the significance of these pictures to me is very big, unlike something you see in images I have found – images that have no importance to me.
With found images, as we have seen in my collage pieces, I do not hesitate to destroy or disfigure the photos: I am not attached to the people or the things in the pictures so I am not worried about altering them.

I have always easily defaulted back to collages; I find them therapeutic to create. For me these collages really helped me express my feelings and enabled me to focus on exploring my identity further through my artwork.

The composition in these collages is very important to me, using similar colours and sized images to evenly weight the piece. I tend to keep the shades very minimal, only really using a maximum of three; I consider this allows simple balance in the piece and, in doing so, does not detract from the meaning behind it. I also think the scale of these pieces is interesting; though not something I had originally intended. I feel that keeping them small (A4) somewhat symbolises how, although I want to share what I am thinking, I only allow a very small amount to be shared. Keeping the size small makes it close and personal, something you have to come close to see: not in your face and shouting at you for attention, like a larger scale piece would be.

As seen in my collage ‘What’s Bad For the Heart is Good for the Art’ (Fig 11), I have kept the piece very minimal, using layers. In this piece I have actually included one of my drawings instead of a photo. The layers underneath are pieces of an image of paint that I have ripped up and carefully placed. I find the phrase ‘What’s Bad For the Heart is Good for the Art’ to be very true: like artists Tracey Emin, Louise Bourgeois and many others, the most passionate work for me, I find, comes from true deep feelings; being hurt, angry or upset makes for very good art.

I did not like this collage as much as many others that I have created as its very plain and to the point. It leaves no room for imagination and I feel the images I have used in it do not show as much as in other work. Two of my preferred pieces are ‘Stop waiting for Flowers’ (Fig 12) and ‘Eyes’ (Fig 13). Both have more depth behind them and are, perhaps, more relatable for the viewer.
‘Stop Waiting for Flowers’ (quote: stop waiting for flowers to grow out of concrete) shows torn images of buildings in a city – ‘a concrete jungle’ – and a vine of flowers. I have placed the concrete image at the bottom of the collage and then sewn the quote above it as if to symbolise a vine of flowers, surrounding and tangling as they grow. The quote itself is pretty self-explanatory ‘stop waiting for flowers to grow out of concrete’ – stop waiting for something that’s never going to happen; stop wasting your time. I feel upon looking at this piece it may make the viewer reflect on their own life and whether they can relate to this feeling, again similar to many of artist Christian Boltanski’s works. I have used very minimal pale shades in this piece. I tend to be mostly attracted to pastel colours throughout my art, and especially in these collages I think it works best.

‘Eyes’ is possibly my favourite out of all the collages I have created using found images. Here I have used a close-up picture of a male’s face and a blurred image of trees and the sky in the background. As you can see, I have not hesitated to rip up the images: even the male’s face was not at all difficult for me to sabotage. In this case I even felt the urge to rip it and not keep his face whole; I just wanted to retain his features, not him as a person. I wanted to de-personalise him: to get rid of his personality and use his facial features as symbols. I chose to keep his eyes and mouth as I felt they are the most personal and drawing facial features on a person. This almost shows an opposite to Boltanski’s style of ridding a person of their facial features to make them no more than a symbol, but it shows parallels in the style of altering an image to your advantage; to make it say what you want it to, not necessarily what the original image portrayed.

The composition of this piece works well; the two black and white images located opposite each other and the coloured images arranged in between. I had also photocopied this piece and added in sewn text, however I felt this overcomplicated the piece and removed some of the mystery for the viewer.


0 Comments


Doris Salcedo

This year I have been looking at further extending my work with family photos and also using found photos, demonstrating the difference of emotion that can be achieved through the significance of the photos used in an artwork.

Artist Doris Salcedo mostly works with objects donated to her from families with deep trauma to tell. I have been very interested in Salcedo, and chose to research her for my dissertation along with Christian Boltanski. I feel my work shows strong similarities to hers, not necessarily in the physicality but in the depth behind each piece.

Doris Salcedo, born 1958, is a Columbian born sculptor who lives and works in Bogota. Salcedo’s work is largely based on the political violence in her country, using testimonies of families who have had relatives disappear under the military regime. Members of Salcedo’s family were among the hundreds of people who disappeared.

I feel there are very strong comparisons between my work and Salcedo’s as she also very much focuses on identity and story-telling. Salcedo’s works are largely made up using objects owned by those who went missing. She creates these artworks to portray the feeling of loss and devastation that so many in her country have had to experience. We see this in ‘Unland: The Orphans Tunic’ (Fig 5 & 6), an installation I explored in my dissertation.

In this piece, as in many others of Salcedo’s, she deliberately deactivates the original purpose of the object, making them unfit for purpose. These mutations symbolise the impaired mourning that the families of the missing may be enduring.

This is a similar idea and theme that we go on to see later in my work; deactivating the significance of images so they no longer work for their original purpose.


0 Comments


Christian Boltanski (born 1944) is a French sculptor, photographer, painter and filmmaker, most notable for his photography installations and contemporary French Conceptual style.
Boltanski’s work is largely inspired by the holocaust, something that greatly affected his family and went on to affect him.

Boltanski’s artwork ‘Photo Album of Family D’ had a very similar theme to my ‘Stolen Journey’/’Stolen Journey II’, being that he wanted to tell the story of the family in his photographs however he was not aware of who they were or what sequence these photos went in. Instead of using the original images Boltanski re-photographed them all, meaning that the standard of the images had lost some of their original quality and definition. Boltanski has used this as a distancing method; the effect of blurring and loss of significant features leaves the people in the images only as symbols, meaning we cannot attach to them as individuals so easily. This is something Boltanski tends to do recurrently, also being evident in other pieces such as ‘Autel De Lycee Chases’ (Fig 4).
Similarly to Boltanski, I have re photographed and photocopied the photographs I have used; however I had not intended this as a distancing method. If anything, my motives are vastly different: I find it hard to distance myself from the photo or alter it in any way, being why I have reproduced them so that the original is not damaged.

Very much like ‘Photo album of the Family D’ I feel ‘Stolen Journey’ really gives a very nostalgic feeling and, despite the photos displaying my family, it is actually very reflective for the viewer: instead of looking at my family’s story and memories, the observer thinks back to their own.
‘Although Boltanski at first saw the piece as a record of the family’s existence and the significant events of their lives her later stated that rather than teaching about the family D, they sent the viewer back to his or her own past.’ (Gibbons, 2007. P. 77)

Sources
Gibbons, J (2007). Contemporary Art and Memory. London and New York: I.B. Taurus & Co Ltd.


0 Comments

One piece I created was called Stolen Journey (Fig 1). For this piece I was given an old book. I wanted it to be hardback and look used to show an aged story. It just so happened that the perfect book, appearance-wise, was called ‘Stolen Journey’ Additionally I feel that the title fitted perfectly, and in some ways added, to the art. I deconstructed the book so that the A5 folded double pages were combined as a single flat A4 one. I then inserted the pages into my printer and began printing my old family photos onto them. As my Gran is no longer with us to ask the date order and my Grandad could not remember, I decided to put them in the order that I guessed they would go. I was really pleased with this piece but felt it had more potential and really needed to be openly displayed on a larger scale, so I attached the pages singly to a large piece of canvas, creating a new piece: ‘Stolen Journey II’ (Fig 2). This allows a much easier viewing experience, as the viewer is not required to turn the pages. An idea like this very much reminds me of artist Christian Boltanski (his piece ‘Photo Album of the Family D’ (Fig 3) in particular). Boltanski is someone who continues to inspire my work, so much so that I then went on to research him for my dissertation.


0 Comments