University Campus Suffolk

From the clock post here are the other two pictures which have now been scaled down smaller so that I could upload them;

I have beeen looking at different ways which an audience can view works. This is because I wish for the degree show that the audience does not just walk into room and see art on the wall or little sculptures just sitting there, instead I want it to be a little bit more interactive and involve the audience abit more by using their senses.

I have thought about using dirt and wood shavings to cover the floor, this way there will be a different texture to stand on, different smells and noises of rustling when walking around the works. this can also be used to help hide parts of sculptures and make them merge into the floor, without having obvious stras and ends of the sculptures. They will interact with the floor texture aswell as creating a scenario which has not yet been thought of.

Aside from having this new type of floor space using the dirt and wood shavings, I wanted something which the audience needed to use in order to use when walking around. I have come up with an idea of having lanterns, seven will be made and used when looking around. Although candles would be an ideal choice of light for the lanterns, I have to use batteries and lights instead because of health and safety…. I will either make these lanterns out of metal which will be welded or make them out of wood, the glass which is a lantern will be replaced with perspex, something which I can experiment with on whether or not I wanted to include text. this text would be one of the seven quotes on each lantern and can be seen when up close to a wall, the shadows creating the passage in the bible.

I have brought a lantern in a shop to use to experiment with to see if I could get the same effect which I have imagined. Here are two pictures attached which show how the lantern is being used. One is of a lantern just with a candle inside, which has given the desired amount of light, it can create a shadow but you have to get close enough to the work to see it rather than it being bright enough to light up the whole room, making it pointless to use as there mayaswell just be a dim light in the room.

The other image shows the lantern when it is shining upon an angel statue which i had created. I like the shadows that is given off the statue and the shade of lighting which show off the details within the sculpture.

My final post for tonight/morning will be about a canvas I had created using the image of the angel I had created and discussed a few posts ago. This canvas, about waist height I had started by thinking how I would make the canvas stand out a little bit. I decided as it was going to involve an angel, I would tear up the bible and create a border around the edges using these torn parts. I also thought that it might be seen to question an audience into whether or not it is acceptable to rip the bible up, or whether it can be seen as a sin, I have been told by afew people that it could be seen as a sin. This is something which I want in my work, for people to question it and people to think about the images or sculptures, instead of just viewing something which is set out plain and simple infront of them.

To begin with I intended to make this image as a spray stencil, however the stencil had broke half way through creating it. So instead I decided just to paint the angel on using the image created beforehand as reference. I regret doing this as i would like to create more spraypaint canvas’s and I could have developed my skills in making the stencils if I had only spent a little more time on the canvas. instead I was impatient and painted it on, which gave the same image in the end only you can tell on a few part that it has been brushed on instead of sprayed. saying this, if I had to start again with the stencil I may have started a new project and forget about this one which I have done with other projects. So I guess its a good thing I finished this one, which is now one of my favourite finished peices I have created this year, along with the sprayed stencil angel resembling death. The background I had experimented on trying to make the canvas looking old, such as the bible is an old book. During my high school years I had always been told to use teabags to make something look old, so continuing this style I decided to experiment with something I had not done before, painting with teabags onto a canvas for a background. This was not a very good idea, althou it worked in the end. This is because the bags split half way thoruh and also create drip lines down the canvas which I had up against the wall. At the time I hated these drip lines but the more I see them the more they have grown on me, I now dont detest them and have accepted them as part of the work.

In the future I would like to create a few canvases of this style, the bold colours, only using more colours and layers, with using spraypaints instead of being impatient and using acrylic, something else to try in the near future.

During my dissertation and even now I have been looking at the chapman brothers. I have been interested in how they have taken works from goya and changed them in different ways. Insult to Injury is my favourite work from theirs as I was interested in the original series before it had been edited. However after they edited it I had preferred their version that they changed, using clowns and cartoon style images to replace the heads of the victims and people committing the evil acts. They have taken something which has documented such evil deeds against men which would not usually be seen, in this case causing controversy due to the content and making it alright to be seen. They have almost turned the work into a more light hearted type of joke which has their own name on it although they have only altered the orignial image. I also admire how they had not selcted a few to change, they had decided to commit to the whole series and change 80 odd etchings creating their own collection of works. There is one image of the insult to inury collection which I always think of first. This is the image of men who are tied to poles waiting to die. There are seven of these men buy only six of them have been edited with these new faces. This has made the etching a bit more light hearted and it is now taken less seriously. I also like how this is interpreted by an audience, some see it as art while others see it as vandalism. Personally i see it as art.

Another piece they have created which has inspired a piece of work I am planning on created is called ‘Hell’. This is made up of hundred of little figures representing the nazis who are all fighting and experimenting on eachother. This involved many different little scenes taking place and there is always something which catches your eye and keeps your focus on the work. There is even a little figure of hitler which is seen to be painting the events which are occuring.

The last example of the chapmans work which I am going to share is called fuckface and is a sculpture of a child which has had male genetalia put onto his face. This has disfigured the boy, taking an innocent figure and tainting it with something which is seen to be private and even seen by some as offensive. This has taken something which a majority see’s as a figure of good and innocence and changed it to look more like a monster while still keeping some of the qualities it had obtained from before it was altered.

I like the chapmans work because it is different and all the works are daring and out of the ordinary. The work challenged society and aims to stir up controversy within an audience. I enjoy this about the work as it has dared to challenge the views of an audience and even offends people which I have become interested in trying to achieve in some of my own work, only not anywhere near to the standard shown here.

I am going to discuss an idea I had at the start of the year. After seeing the chapmans insult to injury collection. I had been inspired by the clown type faces they had added onto the people. I liked how the faces where slightly disturbing and out of place, playing on fears of people while also being immature and childlike. From seeing this I had decided to take an image of a girl wearing a dress. This dress would be similar to one that is expected from an angel. I had brought this dress cheap, the only problem was that it was red but I wanted it to be white. This problem was resolved when I had decided to do the drawings as line drawing which I would colour later on instead of using a photograph. As seen in the first image I had taken the image, and then drew some basic wings. these had been placed onto the photograph of the girl using photoshop, something which i dislike using as I get easily confused with the program compared to others! Using this image, I was then able to create two different images from this, one which was in black and white with the face not appearing in the picture and one which was in only black or white, which I had decided to use as a stencil, which will be discussed later on in this blog.

The picture of the angel without the face was planned on being used as part of a series. I wanted to create seven of these as etchings which would be painted and inked over at a later time. The plan here was to change the faces, having the face represent a part of the story, a face for fire, a face for dried up earth, a face for dead sea creatures and so on. I wanted to create seven in order showing that there was an angel assigned to commit each individual deed.

This was an idea I had about half a year ago and ever got around to actually creating, the template has been etched out and is ready to print and colour, however I had not developed the faces due to having a dissertation to write at the time which distracted me from my work. I wish I had created this series a long time ago as I am fascinated in how it would have turned out. This is a series I plan on coming back to within the next few weeks as I was so close to finishing it. The problem here is that I have started so many diffeent things only to start something else half way through and loose interest in what I had previously created.