Artist statement: ‘Hey Moon (become the art)’
Artist statement: Hey Moon (become the art)
In my work, I am interested in music culture and how this can be interpreted in an art context; specifically, how the emotions aroused by the music can be portrayed through art.
The piece consists of two photographs: the first is me standing in front of a blank canvas wearing a plain white t-shirt, the second is the same photo but with a completed canvas and a painted shirt. The process of composing these photographs included: building an 80cm by 40cm canvas, mounting the canvas and taking the first photo, covering the canvas in sheet music, painting the canvas (with oil paint), and taking the second photo.
I didn’t begin this assignment with the intention of finishing it as a photography piece. I was given a set of instructions which told me to make a piece inspired my music, and the emotion that it creates. I chose to work from my relaxed playlist which vastly affected what kind of painting it became. Some of the songs included Blink 182 I miss you, Cage The Elephant Cigarette Daydreams and Panic! At The Disco Northern Downpour. These songs were also included in the sheet music in the background. These kinds of songs are lyrically interesting, and especially songs such as Northern Downpour give off a very surrealist feel, e.g.
“If all our life is but a dream Fantastic posing greed Then we should feed our jewelry to the sea”
I decided on the surrealism. I looked to a couple of surrealist artists. For example, Dali’s The Happy Unicorn has the exact right daydream feel to it that feel would represent my music well.
The biggest influence on my painting was Vladimir Kush. His work has a very dreamy, beautiful quality to it, a quality I tried to incorporate into my own painting.
The calm nature of my chosen music and the colour scheme of these surreal works complement each other well. So, I decided on a pastel, (but not limited) colour scheme. I also tried to make what I painted seem as realistic as possible to create the surrealist feel.
Unlike these paintings though, my piece is very busy and intricate. This is because my text implied that I must represent a whole playlist, that’s 98 songs, all with different implications.
While making the painting, and further analysis of my text, I decided that the process was more important than the outcome… that’s when I decided that it was to become photography. The before and after pictures is a good way to represent the process of the painting, and the artist’s involvement. The line that stood out to me most in the text was: ‘Become the art’. More times than not, the artist does become art- being covered in as much paint as the painting, showing their passion. This is what I wanted to represent in my photographs.
Imaginary artwork influences
In my text I was told to listen to my playlist, and let that inspire the work. the playlist I used was my ‘sleeping’ playlist, therefore very calm and relaxed. Some of the songs included Blink 182 I miss you, Cage The Elephant Cigarette Daydreams and Panic! At The Disco Northern Downpour. These kinds of songs are lyrically interesting, and especially songs such as Northern Downpour give off a very surrealist feel, e.g.
“If all our life is but a dream
Fantastic posing greed
Then we should feed our jewellery to the sea”
Also I miss you feels quite surreal:
“Hello there, the angel from my nightmare
the shadow in the background in the morgue”
So that why I decided on a surrealist painting. I looked to a couple of surrealist artists that would be appropriate. For example, Dali’s The Happy Unicorn 1977, has the exact right daydream feel to it that feel would represent my music well.
The biggest influence on my painting was Vladimir Kush. His work has a very dreamy, beautiful quality to it, a quality I tried to incorporate into my own painting. 
The calm nature of my chosen music and the colour scheme of these surreal works complement each other well. So, I decided on a pastel, (but not limited) colour scheme. I also tried to make what I painted seem as realistic as possible to create the surrealist feel.
Unlike these paintings though, my piece is very busy and intricate. This is because my text implied that I must represent a whole playlist, that’s 98 songs, all with different implications.
Imaginary artwork
The way my text was written seemed to be spontaneous, so I needed a way to keep the spontaneity in the piece while insuring that it was successful.
Before I got the text I wanted to incorporate the human body into my piece somehow, as it has always been a weakness of mine- so that’s where my first idea steamed from. 
I thought this might portray the line ‘you are the art’ well.
This next idea allows me to be spontaneous in the sense that I will paint what comes into my mind as I’m listening to the music. the only thing that is pre planned here is the gramophone.
The whole text is based around music, and one of the lines is ‘put on your playlist’, now I have two playlists, one quite heavy and the other much softer. I have chosen the softer playlist to represent as I think it will make a more effective painting. 
This is a sort of combination of the two ideas. I have decided however, to paint it landscape. I think I would also like to incorporate some of the styles of surrealist painters such as Vladamir Kush and Magritte- and maybe even some conceptual artists such as Van Gogh.
Ill use oil paint, and try to give the painting a surrealism feel.
Now this is the most important part. If you’ll notice I’ve underlined one line of the text that stood out to me most: ‘Become the art’. This is always something I’ve liked about artists, you can tell there artists; they’ll have charcoal smudged across their foreheads and oil paint under their nails and pastels ground into their clothes. They’re art as well. The text also says something about taking a photo with the canvas, what I plan to do is get someone to take a picture of me and the bank canvas and a blank white shirt on, and then again once the painting is finished and I have paint all over me. I will print out the photos, and that will be my piece- not the painting itself.
The text wasn’t about what I paint but how I paint it, ‘you are the canvas’, ‘become the art’. so that is what I intend to do. 
Text: ‘A Journey’
In class I decided on an Alice in wonderland theme to depict drug use. I made the paper thin as I wanted the viewer to read the text going down as I named the piece ‘decent into madness’. 
In my ‘final’ outcome I focused more on the font and the representation of the words. For example the word ‘hallucination’ is written in a way that is almost a hallucination in its self and so on.
Text
Our assignment was to create a word in which the text either supports the word, or contradicts it. I guess I chose support. The whole thing derived from the saying ‘silence is golden’, which is technically the text.
What contradicts the text is the images around it, protestors and people who society would rather remain silent. Minorities who ought to be heard but often aren’t. I think the contradiction makes the message more shocking.
Reading objects, Writing images-Still life drawing practise
First attempts:
Later drawings:
Reading Prison: Inside
The now closed Reading prison is now an exhibition of writers and artists. A lot of the art shows what life is like to be in prison. Oscar Wilde; a former inmate, was wrongly convicted, and his letters and diary entry’s are displayed here.
Artists like Robert Gober show in a visually beautiful way that prison inmates can still be free on the inside.
Another artist: Wolfgang Tillmans also made a piece to represent prison life. When he was commissioned he came to visit the prison and went into the ‘suicide cell’ (which is a cell designed to protect inmates who are likely to self harm). In the cell was a mirror. the mirror had been hit and punched and completely battered by the inmates over time, and it had become completely distorted. And so Tillmans’ reflection was distorted. The piece is a self portrait of hm looking into that vey mirror. 
other artists in the exhibition didn’t focus on the prison environment, but on other themes, for example Nan Goldin focused on a more sexual theme. For example ‘the song of love’ is an explicit video that has to be viewed through a slit. The viewer is then essentially seeing something they shouldn’t be, peeping in on something private.
And also Doris Salcedo’s piece which has a war theme. All 12 pieces are the size of a coffin. It represents the young men who dies at war. It is designed so that the viewer has to walk through them. It made me feel very uneasy.
other works:
Cyanotype Workshop
Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print. The process uses two chemicals: ammonium iron(III) citrate and potassium ferricyanide. The chemicals are painted onto a blank sheet of paper. When put in UV light the chemical react and turn the paper blue.
After we had prepared the surface, we went out to find things to put onto the paper to create interesting photos. Once we had done that we arranged the leaves and found things on the pre-surfaced paper and left it outside or an hour or so.
We also set up some under a UV light indoors (which took a lot longer) and one other method. Once the surface of the paper had turned a browny colour, you take them inside and put it in the solution. Where the light has been blocked, the paper remains white creating an image.
These are some of the end results:
Nearer the end of the workshop Wendy got a pre-soaked, really long piece of fabric and laid it outside. Some of us laid on it, and others found things to put on it to make patterns. so that was fun.
Sensory Objects Workshop
This workshop was all about planning an exhibition called My House, Mad House. Its all about the mistreatment of the mentally handicapped in St Lawrence’s hospital in the 20th century. 
From the personal experiences of ex patients Mabel Cooper and Harvey Waterman we have learned the inhuman way that patients at the hospital were treated. Mabel told of the way that they weren’t allowed their own clothes, everyone shared from one wardrobe. Toothbrushes were all shared and patients were dehumanised on a daily basis. Nobody was allowed out and very few people had visitors, it was much like a prison.
Mabel Cooper
The point of the workshop was to come up with an exhibition to show to the common people what it was like to live in the hospital. the aim is to shock and inform, while still being sensitive. A few ideas included:
- Dividing the space up into different rooms of the hospital (bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, etc.)
- Having beds stacked up high to represent how close together the beds were
- Having people wear headphones as they walk around to represent the sounds of the hospital, and/or a patients inner dialogue
- having a tooth brush running along multiple sets of teeth
- having the viewers wear a borrowed piece of clothing as they look around
- having a strong smell of disinfectant in the exhibition
Having all of this sensory stimuli will help the audience empathise with the patients of St Lawrence’s hospital and give them a better understanding of what is was like to live such a underprivileged life.
Creative Writing Workshop
We started with a quick langue exercise which involved giving a picture a different headline according to who’s writing it. For example the telegraph newspaper would be a lot more formal than the sun.
we then went to the next step: till using art as a vocal point, but putting in poetry as well. we chose a picture from an art book, and then one line from a poetry book, and worked on a poem about the picture incorporating the chosen line of poetry. This was my poem: 
Not seeing and not heard,
The stillness. Taking up position, night falls,
They do too
The nothing. Life is but a series
Of silences.
We then did a similar thing with a different picture. but this time choosing lines from different poems to make one poem. this drawing looked to me like a memory, sort of hazed; so I picked my poem lines to match that. This was my poem:
Mirage of summer. returning.
Where will you find such warmth outside?
On such a morning as this;
Friend of my youth, you are dead!
In the weeping eyes of his lover
when it comes, my heart breaks fourth and sing.
We then cut up these poems into sections and put the words in the middle of the table. everyone then used each others words to create their own new poem.
Longing
Hallucination
The non-attached angels,
again.
But never canst be free.
National Art Gallery
My visit to the National art gallery in London was helpful for my ‘modernisms and mythologies’ module in the sense that it gave me a better insight into why the ‘modern’ era of art came about. Throughout the 15th to the 17th century art was used as a way of showing off wealth. Rich people owned expensive paintings, and art didn’t go much further than that. for example this painting by Luis Melendez:
This is a perfect example of showing off ones wealth by painting a lavish lifestyle. There are many paintings from the era which simply wish to portray nothing more than how much money they had, and showing off that which others didn’t have. This is one of the reasons that the modernism movement came about: to make art more than just wealth, and to make art available to everyone- not just the rich.
Such narrow ideas about what art could be lead to the modern era.
Rachel Gibson 