10 PRJCT Perfection Campaign For The Unattainable
Pushing myself to work with this neon material in a different way to one which I had originally imagined has been a really interesting experienced. Sitting in the small, dark space with nothing but the noise from the lights to listen to has encouraged me to reflect
on the material and my work in a new way. This and other recent experiences and interactions have made me start to ask new questions about my work.
What do I want from my work?
What do I want it to achieve? Both for me and for those that will experience it.
I think ultimately I want my work to encourage its audience to consider my subject matter in a new light somehow.
I want to be able to express my thoughts about my subject in such a way that get other people thinking about it, debating it, reflecting on it as well. I want to be able to pose certain questions in ways that perhaps haven’t been tried before.
My current fear is that my thought patterns run into places that, particularly with my current subject matter of gender identity, can quickly become quite repellant.
I am struggling with how to work with that.
I’m not coming up with the ideas for the gratuitous shock value at all and in a lot of ways I feel that tactic is outdated anyway.
Is the shock a by-product?? Or is it something I need to harness and use?? If so, how do I do that?
A large part of the problem that I have with the repellant nature of some of the ideas I’m coming up with, is that I will often be using my own body in pretty invasive ways. This develops a barrier of personal struggles that add a complication to my progression. Again, this makes me question, in the same way as with the ‘shock value’, do I ignore my personal struggles and crack on regardless or do I integrate them into my work? Are they relevant or do I put them aside?
The Labours X, Helen Chadwick, 1986
Helen Chadwick is an artist whose work I am just discovering.
Chadwick’s innovative and provocative use of a rich variety of materials, such as flesh, flowers, chocolate and fur, was hugely influential on a younger generation of British artists. Her strongly associative and visceral images were intended to question gender representation and the nature of desire.
(http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/helen-chadwick-2253)
The work shown above taken from the series Ego Geometria Sum (1983-6), shows the artist struggling under the weight of her own self image. This was brought to mind because this is the same struggle I am trying to cope with as I work. Do I incorporate it like Chadwick does here?
