Why look into Tracey Emin?
Tracey Emin is an British artist who recreates her past through objects to make her art work. Looking at Emin’s my bed within the horizontal view of the photograph, it seems inhabited with recognisable used everyday objects which simply forces the viewer to respond more in a social context. The meaning of the social context is more outlined when it comes to seeing the everyday used objects on the bed that relates back to her social life style.
Theorist mandy merck and Chris Townsend explain about how the use of objects or readymades develop the signs of memory traces through Tracey Emin’s work.
” Emin frequently uses images, objects and materials from her own life to address difficult subjects such as rape and abortion but her work consciously reworks her ‘life story’ as a set of narratives and memories.”
My bed is clearly a piece of work that invokes a direct response to the viewer with the objects laid out as obvious clues to Emin’s past. All the objects point to a direct sexual downfall of Emin’s relationship history. These signs from the objects indicate memory traces from her relationship with men.
How does Tracey Emin relate to my artwork?
So in relation to my current themes most of my work is about cultural relationships and does address a social contexts such as Emin’s work. I also like to use everyday objects to address my experiences as narratives. Like my Chinese squatting toilet, this explains a narrative that is held within the objects because I am partially trying to explain my illness and not telling the whole story.
Why look into Gonzalez-Torres?
He primarily uses everyday objects to present his artworks in a way to show his personal memories of his relationships with his gay lover. This idea of presenting lovers within objects to make a narrative of loss or absence relates back to my degree show of the two clocks with the eight hours difference and my Chinese and English food and drink objects.
One of his best known works is called Perfect Lovers (1991) which are two very identical clocks that appear to look the same but are in fact representing two different male lovers. The two clocks were created into an art form representing the traumatic state with the death of Gonzalez-Torres’s partner and these two clocks act as the transfiguration version to both lovers.
Although my clocks in my last degree show and my latest work with the Chinese food and drinks do not entirely relate to the whole trauma theme, there is still this loss of my girlfriend in which does become traumatic for me in a way that you feel you have lost something and when you want it you cannot grasp it.
What has changed from my ideas with the Chinese & English foods and drinks?
I have given some ideas with careful thought and I have decided that fr now, I will try to print these images out to see what these objects will look like in crast to the actual real objects. I feel that these images are more powerful when it comes to displaying the objects in couples alone and away from the other objects. To display them in couples would bring in the relation of me and my girlfriend and the part about separation of couples from far distances coming together again.
Relating to Xenia Hausner and Ai WeiWei
In a way this idea of contrasting the foods and drinks really does relate back to the two artists where they use their cross culture influences in painting or objects. This idea of my cross-culture foods and drinks is to not only represent my girlfriend and me but also other Chinese and English people as well. When the two cultural foods and drinks come together it then brings in the juxtaposition where you are contrasting the two relations together.
This message that I am trying to bring forward not only is to try and show that the two cultures share a resemblance but the main narrative is to address the absence or loss of my girlfriend where we are meant to be together.
What is the next plan of action?
On Monday I will try to print these images out onto some nice photographic matt finish paper and see how the objects work on there. If they work quite well, I may try to produce a human size one where you have the objects of foods and drinks in human size that would represent our bodies a lot more. But i will see first how the normal size photographs will work and go from there.
Who Have I looked into that relates to my two culture themes?
Australian Artist Xenia Hausner is a portrait painter who produces big scale paintings. Xenia Hausner has made a fresh assessment of this broad realm of globalised modernity. What seems at first to be a snapshot of daily life is in truth the multiple refraction and reflection of life in a world in which cultures are entwined in another. Xenia Hausner is mainly concerned with the seismographic recognition of a mutual curiosity and attraction between west and east. Hausner’s typically expressive techniques does not offer distinct and realistically interpretable scenes.
Rather she manipulates elements from various regions and cultural environments into a new fragmented reality. The asian and European girl in school uniforms, the three western women in front of a North Korean propaganda poster and a young couple beneath Chinese lanterns and neon lights. Hausner has simulated all these scenes in her studio using models. By looking at Hausner’s re-enactments in her paintings clearly resemble China as east and europe as west. Again you have the two cultural societies in a juxtaposition mode where the two cultures are trying to contrast with each other.
So how does Xenia Hausner relate to my Cross culture themes?
Hausner relates back to my degree show where you have myself playing with Chinese people with a game of Mahjong acting as juxtapositions. Right now this theme of the cross-cultures of England and China will continue into development with my current work.
What development have I done with the Drawings?
As I have previously said about wanting to print them, I have managed to have a go at printing them today. I got Glen ‘the technician’ to help print one of these images out first just to see if it will work because the detail of my drawings are very fine lined. In the end one of my drawings did manage to come out very good onto the acetate and thought it was crisp and neatly printed. Then Glen exposed my printed acetate image onto the silkscreen using photo emulsion so that he can transfer the image for me so I can print it.
The image did come out very nice and crisp with all the detail shoing on the silkscreen so was very happy about that. There were about 5 minor spots that were showing on the silkscreen where some of the photo emulsion was washed away but I managed to cover up all of the spots so that the ink does not get through them. So now that I have inspected it and covered up any holes and gaps, I was ready to print my image onto some nice Fabriano paper.
What was the result of the print process?
To be honest I was happy very much with the results of my printing process and if i had to rate the difficulty in printing them it would just be a 5 /10. This is a simple print that I printed with just one colour but still had to use some plastic film to align my image on the paper so that the alignment of the image is neat enough. I was very happy with the result of printing this first English and Chinese illness drawing image and did end up looking the way I wanted it to look so I was satisfied with that result.
I then wanted to think about trying some of the special paper with the hair and fibres embed into the paper which is indian paper. I wanted to try one of these out to see what effect and narrative I could create. When I looked at the Indian special paper, it looked as though it has hair embed in it as to say a toilet has hair inside the toilet room and looking at this paper would help develop the narrative further of my disgusting atmosphere of my Chinese and English Illness. So it made me wanna experiment with this paper compared to the other normal paper but has worked better in terms of narrative.
What will I do next?
I will think about printing the next 3 Chinese and English Illness prints onto the acetate and see if they come out the same neatness as the first one. Once that has happened, then me and Glen can think about exposing the next 3 of them images onto 3 other silkscreens and hopefully they will come out neat and crisp as the first successful image. After I have managed to successfully print these out I might either think about using a second colour on them or I will just leave the images how they are but I will see…
