Discussing our Interim Exhibition 08/01/21: this exhibition is part of our final degree project and due COVID we are unable to use the Art Station space in Saxmundham for our exhibition so we had to reorganise. See my notes from this session below:
Instead of a physical exhibition we have had to go online with use of the Art Stations Instagram and website. It’s exciting as it will give us a new audience to showcase to, something we have only experienced with our Arlington’s exhibition in L5 and a new experience with digital showcasing. As there is 5 of us, we aim to take over the Art Station’s Instagram each day (this isn’t set in stone yet – but hopefully will be soon) and showcasing our artwork throughout the day.
Reflection 29/03/21: This worked so well, Jane handled the social media take overs and uploaded our posts we chose/gave. It gave the audience an inside in to other work we have done as well as attention to our social media presence.
Due to lockdown, we cannot go into the uni to display our work however, we collectively have come up with an idea to pick a room in our own house and use that as an installation space, to display our work in a new and different way – connects our works together with the issues we have had to face in our degree due to COVID – lockdown in our home. Independently, we have chosen a space which will benefit our work in relation to that space. I have chosen the kitchen to relate to the gender domestic roles and the female representation. I aim to use this time to experiment and explore how to present my work which will suit best.
Possible ideas/thoughts:
- Small clay breast covering the counter tops, oven, hob, dining table, walls/across kitchen etc. Relates to Womanhouse
- Projection as well as the physicality of sculptures.
- Relate back to ideas that contain doll house imagery – 1-1 with Charlotte Newson and the representations of women.
Reflection 26/01/21: Womanhouse was massively impactful here within my approach now, alongside Pipilotti Risk’s Pixel Forest. Dispersing colour around the kitchen. The projection in the crook of the oven area and island, opens up the audiences eyes to the environment I am working in, as well as the cinematic approach to objectification of women Mulvey explores and the distortion that comes with this.
I had a thought 10/01/21 for Interim, I aim to use my clay sculptured breasts, I wanted to explore for this installation more than just the image that they ‘represent women’, to assess how the breast of a women changed through history and how it plays to expectations/ representations of women and the male gaze. Breasts used for reproduction, fertility, art, objects and sex. It’s important to see “how the ideas evolved to fit the standards and beliefs of each time and culture” (Chards, 2019), and how the eyes of the male gaze has adapted this.
Breasts: shape, size, colour and distance from each other on the body, are all aspects every women is insecure. Each aspect can reflect if they are sexy/‘in trend’ with that breast shape in that moment or not. “The representation is also a reflection of each culture’s understanding of the role of women in their society” (Chards, 2019). It will always control how breasts are perceived/interpretation of the male gaze effects how women feel about the breasts. This is why I think it would be interesting to use these clay breasts in the kitchen for representation of women in both the domestic role/sexual objectification – using the female gaze POV to confront.
Ancient Egyptians’ breasts were ‘regular size’ and used to present “their power and their ability to provide life” (Chards, 2019), yet in sexual situations they were pictured as small. Suggesting men’s opinion on breasts were favoured. Ancient Romans were seen as ideal to have big, perky breasts which were emphasised with the use of a band around this bust. “Women with big perky boobs were highly popular in the empire” (Chards, 2019) also with a small body. Recent times, within the 1920/30s, you were seen as ideal if you had flat breasts and again by the 50s it’s expected to have the pointiest breasts to be favoured. The 80s and 90s were all about large perky breasts.
- There’s a massive change from year year to year, and also due to the porn industry, page 3, play boy, fashion, magazines, social media… The list is endless… it damages the real outlook on natural women and their bodies. This is something I have discussed within L5 within my pieces’ US. With fetishisation, breasts have developed into an ‘object’ of desire. They are “generally fetishised as a crucial part of any “desirable” woman’s body” (Thorpe, 2015). Men and women will always have different perspectives/approaches to breasts, is it the act of the gaze that further affects the way women feel so insecure about their bodies?/sexualised for?
Reflection 14/04/21: Pornography is currently having an impact on my current practice of Sweet Tooth B&W which was lightly addressed here so early on. Pornography industry is getting worse and I don’t think will ever stop, this continues to play to male gazes’ expectations of life/women.
Owens is an art critic I’m analysing for my dissertation in research of Barbra Kruger’s Your Gaze Hits The Side Of My Face – “evil eye” (Owens, 1992, p195) of the male/gaze, that turns women to stone = object – Medusa aspect, except the gaze of viewer instead has the power. This shares the way I use clay in the breast sculptures, the gazer of them makes them objects. – Interpret physical sculptures with projection?
Reflection 06/03/21: This aspect worked well with the way I filmed the breasts in Are You Watching? I started from afar and got closer throughout the film, allowing people to only see round objects to begin with to connect the objectification women have.
Currently I am creating more clay breasts to work with for Interim. They’re going to continue to be sizes, shapes and pierced, un-pierced. None of them are the same and each carry their own identity, like the reality. See below, they are in the process of being made – I need A LOT! (I underestimated how many I will need, CUBED all over again). Reflection: 29/03/21: The placement of the breasts in the kitchen intensified the domestic roles within society’s image. I chose not to paint the extra breasts as the projection gave them their own colour and light.
Interesting to note Jenny Saville works with “vivacious explorations of the naked female form” (culture trip, n.d.), I found Saville in 2015 at collage, it was Propped, 1992, see below, I had never seen the body laid out in this way before, it was disturbing as I never get to see bodies displayed like this. But also refreshing, to see a body displayed and painted so comfortably. The use of the blues/pinks brush strokes gives the body normality, realness. I want to use this aspect in Interim somehow – accentuate the colour more, pink projection? & the confidence in placement.
Saville looks at the natural and “unapologetic” (Gagosian) imagery of the female body. What is titled by society as, imperfections, of the body. She suggests the frankness of the flesh and shows the body for what it is no sexual imagery through a females POV which helps us women see the reality of the form. This is what I want to carry through into my practice but exploiting the sexual aspect which has come from the gaze, like Saville does by “raising questions about society’s perception on the body” (Gagosian). – how it’s relation to space changes its perception of the body.
Reflection 14/04/21: The bold coloured projection worked well in Are You Watching? and my previous works, but interesting to see that I still have the strong visual of objectification now, through black and white and performance of eating. – almost a drastic change, but it isn’t?
