After having the feedback from the first draft of my Artist Statement, I have gone back and changed a few elements from the feedback I was given.
This is my new artist statement draft:
At the beginning of the
year I was walking around the town and heard a young girl speaking to her
parents saying 'I want this!' with the quick reply being 'Do you really need
that?'. This initially stemmed my thoughts about consumerism and whether we need
the things we buy plus how it could easily lead to mass consumption.
I produced a painting
shortly after this experience having being inspired by an artist named 'Sarah
Key'. The main aspect of Key's work to me that I really liked was replacing a
human head with one of an animal form. I used a similar approach but replaced a
persons head with a shopping bag which takes away their identity mirroring what
consumerism does. The materials I used were acrylic on canvas. This was the
piece that after a few tutorials and experimenting, I realized that there were
some aspects to my painting style that could be adapted/improved. I thought
this could also could seem too forceful towards consumerism being bad,
therefore I needed look into identity further and do some deeper reading.
I also explored identity
through my exhibiting and curating modual where we performed a collaboration.
We all produced a piece of art and then passed it around the group only
spending maximum an hour to adapt it. This created a similar movement to what advertisement companies do themselves. One person may have the original idea of
the advertisement, then it is passed on and eventually the ideas from the first
creator has changed totally, their identity has been lost.
Just before the
exhibiting and curating I made a series of squared blocks which I produced from
various sized cuts of wood. They were each painted in a certain colour that
represented a certain shop. Also, on one of the largest surfaces, I transferred the image of the chosen store. When all made and coupled together, it looked
like a miniature shopping outlet. They also reminded me of children s playing
blocks. Relating these pieces to children s playing toys highlights innocence
which is totally opposite to consumerism as it doesn't display purity but does
the opposite which is corruption. Plus, being toy-like translates to something
being controlled by another.
I wanted to experiment and reveal
less to my audience allowing them to interpret it themselves. I was really
interested in how painting and photography are related also how they both are
great sources enabling a connection with the audience. I played around with
various pictures, taking them in different locations in relation to my
consumerism theme. After doing so, I later produced a tri of photos, these
images were taken in a small public park very close to the town center The
first image was of a woman carrying a shopping bag, then the second and third
image the bags duplicated but in a way that wasn't obvious to the viewer. This
piece of photography was a slight illusion, allowing the viewer to spend a bit
more time picking out differences in these images. But, the main importance in
this piece was maybe not the content, however the location and time/awareness I
believed to be most successful.
At this point, I began
to think about how people are always in a rush to buy things and to get places,
how we haven't got 'time' to stop and think before doing. This is where I
changed the direction of my practice as I realized that I had been doing what
everyone else in the public do, rushing around and not being aware! I wanted to
focus my attention to those who we do forget, people who may want to get involved with this rush, who may want to mass consume which we take for
granted, people like the homeless.
The change in direction
I found hard to begin with, at present time I am continuing the research
further into this area so that I can develop a deeper understanding on how
consumerism effects those less fortunate.
I was walking home one
night after being in the studio, there was a homeless guy sitting in the town center and I tried to think about what it is like to be in his shoes. This
inspired me to create a poster using the Photoshop software. The poster
displayed a street where a homeless man is sitting in the center and people are
just walking past him, ignoring him. When I was playing around with the
software I used an emboss tool, it allowed me to offset the image of the homeless man from the original one. This reminded me of early 3D cinema because
the distortion makes it look 3D like. Also, 3D was related to superheros,
people we want to be and look up to as children. This was interesting because
it was displaying the homeless as this positive force, whereas we see it as
being a negative/a sad thing. Working with software like Photoshop, it was as
if I was using their tools against them.
Consumerism is a strong
force that does affect our living environment I have just started transferring images onto canvas and then pushing colour from the back through the fabric.
The colour travelling through creates this bleeding/penetrating notion. Looking
at consumerism, it has this penetrating force, it is like a voice that is
clearly heard over all other sounds.
I am working to create a
human sized model of a homeless man crunched up in a corner of a room. The
reason behind this is to generate a big impact on the viewer. Putting this
model in an exhibition format makes me question, would an audience be more
aware and feel different towards the homeless man here compared to if he was
outside on the street?
I have a meeting later with Anna to discuss if I need to make further changes to this.
