art student
He’s interested in relationships and phycological anchors that they create.
Says thy art school corrupts artists and he is trying to get back to the artist he was before an art education.
Paints from family portraits but with the light from behind; creating both a sense of space and flatness.
Wanted to paint images of desire and a perfect world.
There are a countless number of ways to tell a story; a book, a film, a play, a comic, classic word of mouth etc.
When I started this project, I thought I was interested in depression and death, but as I keep moving forward, I’m realising that my drive is actually storytelling.
I would like to continue exploring the art of storytelling, especially visually.
Also to explore the line between photography and film; films are just lots of photographs put together, are they not?
So with this little epiphany, I will continue with my practise focusing on the act of story telling, rather than the plot.
This is where the surrealism comes in. I wanted to make a fairytale feel, in a strange way.
This over the top editing gives of quite a childlike feel, which is similar to my original stop motion.
I chose to do the actual shoot in a place of nature, the Harris gardens. I wanted to have natural surroundings to extenuate the unnatural ness of the subjects. Also echoing Mendieta in her nature scapes.
Life is colourful and good , and death is dark and sad because nobody likes him.
I went for life being a female because of the term ‘Mother Nature’ as well as females being the ones to bring life into the world. And death as a male because it’s just the opposite of life.
Ronen Goldman
Ronen Goldman is an artist and conceptual photographer, who was born in California but now currently lives in Israel. Ronen’s conceptual photographs consists of him photographing his dreams, and often spends months planning and perfecting his idea before he begins the photographing process.
I bases the decoration of the mask on my original monster in my animation ‘I miss you’:
The Russian contemporary photographer Ionova-Gribina revisits our early encounters with death, often experienced via the loss of an animal, whether it’s a beloved pet or an anonymous critter on the side of the road. In her photography series, Ionova-Gribina creates and captures monuments to animals she discovered riding on her bike, all of whom died of natural causes. She surrounds each animal with bright flowers picked from her backyard, creating beautiful tributes. “I wanted to find a way to save them for the world of art,” she explains in her artist statement. “They were so unprotected… One or two days more and they would be eaten by worms.”
Much like Mendieta, she combines the beauty of nature and the morbidity of death. I like the idea of making something horrible so charming.
Woodman was only 22 years old when she killed herself in 1981 by leaping out of a window. Perhaps in part because of her untimely end, her work is imbued with a sinister chill, as if each image was in some way predicting the darkness to come. The brilliant young artist constantly photographed herself in domestic spaces, often trapped, smudged or fading away like a ghost. The hauntingly beautiful images address not only death itself, but the sort of death involved in the domestic existence many women were forced to experience.
I have been a fan of Woodman’s work for sometime now, her eerie, unique style of photography speaks to me in a way that no other artist has before. I love the idea of the fading figures and unusual compositions and would give anything to capture something so powerful in my own photographs
She then began a brief yet ardent artistic career — she died at just 36 years old — grappling with issues of love, death and rebirth using her body and mother nature as a vessel. In her Silhouette series, she lay shrouded in an ancient Zapotec grave, letting natural forms eat up her diminutive form.
I have looked at Mendieta in previous projects and I find her work so inspiring. The intertwining of humans and nature; This a beautiful and tragic way of looking at death as a concept and would love to bring her ideas of nature and death into my own work.
This is all paper maché.
I started by drawing death based off my monster character in my animation ‘I miss you’. I plan to shoot in a forest and edit in things like fog and grave stones. While drawing death I wondered what life would look like as a person. I went for a young woman as females are the ones that produce life in most cases as well we call nature ‘mother’. I then accidentally made a kind of love story between the two concepts.
So the photography series could be a story, much like the animation was. My practise always comes back to story telling and I think that’s a good thing to focus on.
I am going to be using photography to personify death. to do this I am going to be using costumes and dressing people up. To get inspiration and get some artistic context I have found a few artists who use costumes etc. in their practise.
Cindy Sherman
Cynthia Morris “Cindy” Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman utilizes the camera and the various tools of the everyday cinema, such as makeup, costumes, and stage scenery, to recreate common illusions, or iconic “snapshots,” that signify various concepts of public celebrity, self confidence, sexual adventure, entertainment, and other socially sanctioned, existential conditions.
BiS Kaidan (band)
BiS Kaidan is a collaboration between the J-pop idol group BiS and the long-running noise project Hijokaidan. The result is something akin to a Babymetal that’s more unsettling than adorable. The most disturbing part? The five young women in the band always perform in white schoolgirl uniforms, stained with blood and bearing cartoonish entrails.
(I like the use of costumes to create a creepy-cute feel).
Monique Jenkinson
Monique Jenkinson (Fauxnique) is a multi-genre performing artist and choreographer whose work uses drag to consider the performance of femininity as a powerful, vulnerable and subversive act.
Andrea Mary Marshall
Andrea Mary Marshall is perhaps best recognized for—and through—her variously photographed and painted self portraits. For Marshall, who studied fashion at Parsons the New School, the works are a combination of fashion, props, posture, and performance—her characters are frequently seen smoking one or several cigarettes, or satisfying an oral fixation.
To develop my study, I have decided to carry on with my theme of death and grief in different ways.
To do this I will start with a photography project. I plan to use costumes and photo editing to personify death in human form, and maybe even explore the relationship between life and death in a romantic context.
I have gathered photos of couples I know and put them in envelopes with ironic captions. Captions such as ‘he’s sleeping with the girl in the pink envelope’ and ‘she doesn’t know he has aids’. I went for a more humorous approach. The project I was responding to was all about love lost and I went for fake/ young love.
I composed this mind map after reading Abby’s statement and getting to know her piece.
I enjoy the use of literature and the themes of love and loss, and plan to respond accordingly. As the envelopes are such an important piece of symbolism I will be using this in my response.
I have decided to focus on the negative side of love (in a less beautiful way) by using photography. I plan to acquire envelopes and photographs. I will write negative captions on the envelopes such as ‘he’s been cheating on her for two months’ etc.
Instead of a tragically beautiful display of love lost, I will make a ironic, and comic display of fake and unrequited love.
I will be responding to Abby Barrett’s piece ‘We didn’t get the chance to become what we wanted to be.‘
Her statement:
My work is an installation designed with envelopes, flowers, and typography. The reason I chose to use envelopes stems from a desire to move away from the new technological and social media era. Instead I wanted to bring back the more meaningful way love letters used to be written and sent – with such delicacy, and time. It represents a more romantic time in history, in my opinion. The poet, Isabella Whitney, who used a love letter to win her lover back after he left her for another woman, inspired me. On the outside of the envelopes, I have written quotes about the loss of love, derived from random quotes found online, in books, in songs and in movies. The quotes were written on the outside to represent a metaphor of ‘wearing your heart on your sleeve’. It provokes feelings of being vulnerable and exposed, in the most pure and terrifying way. Collectively, they represent feelings of lost love, which almost everyone has experienced in some form or another, an almost love.
Being a joint-honors student with English Literature, I thought it would be very interesting to explore an art piece tying together both of my subjects, which this work specifically does. I experimented with making my own envelopes, however I found it too challenging to produce enough in a short period of time. Luckily I managed to find some that fit my idea for the project perfectly. I also experimented with the font and style of the text, using brush strokes, pencils, pens, as well as markers, faded markers and stenciling. I finally decided on a specific font, the classic typewriter style, which was inspired by and similar to the works of Glenn Ligon. I decided on this font alone as an attempt to connect every love story together, and to show a united pain, similar to the use of different languages within the quotes. The flowers, on the other hand, work in a different way, both visually and meaningfully. Flowers are pleasing to the eyes; yet also demonstrate the imagery usually put into books, movies and songs of love and romance. They are a typical symbol of a declaration of love, much like the quotes on the envelopes.
The envelopes and flowers hang down in front of the words painted on the walls, similar to the light bulb works of Felix Gonzalez Torez. A prominent addition to the work includes the words painted on the wall. They read ‘we didn’t get the chance to become what we wanted to be’. This phrase allows the viewer to get the feel of the artwork, lovers who didn’t get the chance to be together like they had hoped. The idea of mirroring the project came to my mind towards the end of my project with the help of my studio tutor. It creates an effect of ‘two lovers, two hearts broken and two lives altered’. It immediately created more meaning for the work, whilst making it more eye-catching. Tracey Emin, who worked with big prominent and powerful phrases, influenced the style of the painted words. In addition, I also used the influences of artists such as Kay Rosen and Jenny Holzer.
From this I will chose which direction to go in and what part of the piece I will focus on.
Rachel Gibson 