Given the events last night's European elections, the admittance of two BNP candidates and the feeling of a general swing to the far right across Europe (at least in terms of those elected), today I've been thinking more about if there's a way of my politics having a more direct, or conscious influence on my work. Although I'm very politically minded and aware of current affairs, I've avoided a direct reference to specific issues in my practice, as I don't think that the way I make art is the best format for these types of discussions. However, I'm beginning to wonder if by thinking about these issues consciously, they could have an influence on my work, even if the results are still a visual layering of ideas, suggestions, my way of thinking…
(continues)
(8th June continued)
I had a tutorial with Louise Wilson when both she and Jane gave a talk through the visiting lecturers programme at uni recently. The main issue that came out from this, is to have a much clearer idea of where I'm positioning myself in a wider context, both within the visual arts arena, but also wider than that, to a larger cultural context. I've been reading some essays about Ann Hamilton and Mary Kelly at Louise's suggestion, and I've also ordered copies of The Everyday and Appropriation, part of the Whitechaple's Documents of Contemporary Art series. Stephen Johnstone's introductory essay in The Everyday is relevant to some of my thinking: quoting Rebecca J. DeRoo, he writes that ‘the everyday might be the common ground of experience that allows museum visitors to "understand the effects of history on the private lives of those who were usually overlooked"'. The photographs I've been accumulating have this personal, yet generic quality about them, yet due to their age, there is also this feeling of exoticism. So they have this contradiction of being something everyday from a particular period of time, yet because this time period is in the past, from a contemporary point of view they are special, something unique and different from our present-day notions of an everyday photographic image. More contradictions in my practice again.
I'm attaching an image of a ‘dress'-trace to this post. I've taken apart this item of clothing, reconstructed it from an old net curtain I found in a charity shop, then sprayed car paint though it, so the image is left on floor. The car paint is the wrong material (suggests something quite industrial and manual, even though I am very particular about the shades of spray paint I use, so they have to all be mixed up specially for me at Halfords), but I quite like the effect on the floor. More pondering required though, I think.
