I feel I am enjoying my work more due to the abject content my work is having, and this is something that fascinates me within art. How we can as humans get so shocked at something slightly out of the ordinary and put up these barriers of disgust, not wanting to go near or interact with the piece through something slightly abject? I feel my work is abject but it’s subtly abject. It doesn’t shout at you in the face it’s abject, it draws you in closer through your curiosity before shocking you with what it is, then provoking reactions from the viewer. I don’t want to hide this abjectness but at the same time I don’t think it has to be overly shocking to create a disgusted response. Such as a few hairs on a piece of cheese can provoke all that response for something quite small and discrete.
Many of my friends have commented about how disgusting it is to use used make-up wipes and to create something out of them. However they all put this mask of make-up on in the morning and remove it in the evening the same as me with a wipe. What is it that makes it so abject? Is it the thought of someone elses skin which has been rubbed on this wipe? Or is it just because they are waste material that should be discarded at the end of the day? They all do this, it’s just I have used them to make something from. No-one is disgusted in the morning when putting on all these layers of products. It is just when the face is removed and the traces of make-up are left on the wipe that it suddenly become so disgusting, it seems.
I feel this does reflect our modern day society with how much we are reminded to recycle. There is this whole mass production in society where items are made in their thousands, shipped all over the world, but once finished with they are discarded or recycled. Will one day recycling come to the extreme that we have to reuse old face wipes? I doubt it very much, but I feel this does portray modern society in a way. It is not really the area I am looking at within my work but it does relate a lot I feel. So much stuff is recycled now. We do not know what was on that piece of paper before it was recycled; as it now looks new. I think a lot of it is to do with the visual impact of the object with viewer. You have to see it to believe it perhaps, or have to want to believe it?
I feel like I am slightly going off trail but it does remind me of the piece by Piero Manzoni called ‘Artist’s Shit’, unless we see it do we believe it is there? I feel this is an interesting approach to art, how does the viewer know to trust the artist? I want to confront the viewer with my work. I want them to have to come closer to my work curious as to what it is, then to find it is old make-up or that its my strands of knotted hair. I don’t want them to question it I want it to stare them in the face once they realise. But I feel this subtly is also needed and is very important with my work to be able to draw them in slowly. They probably will question why I have done it but I don’t want them to question whether it actually is real hair for example, I am hoping they realise it is.
