New draft of my Artist statement

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.