Degree Project: Digital Sketchbook

Discussing our Interim Exhibition 08/01/21: this exhibition is part of our final degree project and due COVID we are unable to use the Art Station space in Saxmundham for our exhibition so we had to reorganise. See my notes from this session below:

Instead of a physical exhibition we have had to go online with use of the Art Stations Instagram and website. It’s exciting as it will give us a new audience to showcase to, something we have only experienced with our Arlington’s exhibition in L5 and a new experience with digital showcasing. As there is 5 of us, we aim to take over the Art Station’s Instagram each day (this isn’t set in stone yet – but hopefully will be soon) and showcasing our artwork throughout the day.

Reflection 29/03/21: This worked so well, Jane handled the social media take overs and uploaded our posts we chose/gave. It gave the audience an inside in to other work we have done as well as attention to our social media presence.

Due to lockdown, we cannot go into the uni to display our work however, we collectively have come up with an idea to pick a room in our own house and use that as an installation space, to display our work in a new and different way – connects our works together with the issues we have had to face in our degree due to COVID – lockdown in our home. Independently, we have chosen a space which will benefit our work in relation to that space. I have chosen the kitchen to relate to the gender domestic roles and the female representation. I aim to use this time to experiment and explore how to present my work which will suit best.

Possible ideas/thoughts:

• Small clay breast covering the counter tops, oven, hob, dining table, walls/across kitchen etc. Relates to Womanhouse
• Projection as well as the physicality of sculptures.
• Relate back to ideas that contain doll house imagery – 1-1 with Charlotte Newson and the representations of women.

Reflection 26/01/21: Womanhouse was massively impactful here within my approach now, alongside Pipilotti Risk’s Pixel Forest. Dispersing colour around the kitchen. The projection in the crook of the oven area and island, opens up the audiences eyes to the environment I am working in, as well as  the cinematic approach to objectification of women Mulvey explores and the distortion that comes with this.

I had a thought 10/01/21 for Interim, I aim to use my clay sculptured breasts, I wanted to explore for this installation more than just the image that they ‘represent women’, to assess how the breast of a women changed through history and how it plays to expectations/ representations of women and the male gaze. Breasts used for reproduction, fertility, art, objects and sex. It’s important to see “how the ideas evolved to fit the standards and beliefs of each time and culture” (Chards, 2019), and how the eyes of the male gaze has adapted this.

Breasts: shape, size, colour and distance from each other on the body, are all aspects every women is insecure. Each aspect can reflect if they are sexy/‘in trend’ with that breast shape in that moment or not. “The representation is also a reflection of each culture’s understanding of the role of women in their society” (Chards, 2019). It will always control how breasts are perceived/interpretation of the male gaze effects how women feel about the breasts. This is why I think it would be interesting to use these clay breasts in the kitchen for representation of women in both the domestic role/sexual objectification – using the female gaze POV to confront.

Ancient Egyptians’ breasts were ‘regular size’ and used to present “their power and their ability to provide life” (Chards, 2019), yet in sexual situations they were pictured as small. Suggesting men’s opinion on breasts were favoured. Ancient Romans were seen as ideal to have big, perky breasts which were emphasised with the use of a band around this bust. “Women with big perky boobs were highly popular in the empire” (Chards, 2019) also with a small body. Recent times, within the 1920/30s, you were seen as ideal if you had flat breasts and again by the 50s it’s expected to have the pointiest breasts to be favoured. The 80s and 90s were all about large perky breasts.

• There’s a massive change from year year to year, and also due to the porn industry, page 3, play boy, fashion, magazines, social media… The list is endless… it damages the real outlook on natural women and their bodies. This is something I have discussed within L5 within my pieces’ US. With fetishisation, breasts have developed into an ‘object’ of desire. They are “generally fetishised as a crucial part of any “desirable” woman’s body” (Thorpe, 2015). Men and women will always have different perspectives/approaches to breasts, is it the act of the gaze that further affects the way women feel so insecure about their bodies?/sexualised for?

Reflection 14/04/21: Pornography is currently having an impact on my current practice of Sweet Tooth B&W which was lightly addressed here so early on. Pornography industry is getting worse and I don’t think will ever stop, this continues to play to male gazes’ expectations of life/women.

Owens is an art critic I’m analysing for my dissertation in research of Barbra Kruger’s Your Gaze Hits The Side Of My Face – “evil eye” (Owens, 1992, p195) of the male/gaze, that turns women to stone = object – Medusa aspect, except the gaze of viewer instead has the power. This shares the way I use clay in the breast sculptures, the gazer of them makes them objects. – Interpret physical sculptures with projection?

Reflection 06/03/21: This aspect worked well with the way I filmed the breasts in Are You Watching? I started from afar and got closer throughout the film, allowing people to only see round objects to begin with to connect the objectification women have.

Currently I am creating more clay breasts to work with for Interim. They’re going to continue to be sizes, shapes and pierced, un-pierced. None of them are the same and each carry their own identity, like the reality. See below, they are in the process of being made – I need A LOT! (I underestimated how many I will need, CUBED all over again). Reflection: 29/03/21: The placement of the breasts in the kitchen intensified the domestic roles within society’s image. I chose not to paint the extra breasts as the projection gave them their own colour and light. 

Interesting to note Jenny Saville works with “vivacious explorations of the naked female form” (culture trip, n.d.), I found Saville in 2015 at collage, it was Propped, 1992, see below, I had never seen the body laid out in this way before, it was disturbing as I never get to see bodies displayed like this. But also refreshing, to see a body displayed and painted so comfortably. The use of the blues/pinks brush strokes gives the body normality, realness. I want to use this aspect in Interim somehow – accentuate the colour more, pink projection? & the confidence in placement.

Saville looks at the natural and “unapologetic” (Gagosian) imagery of the female body. What is titled by society as, imperfections, of the body. She suggests the frankness of the flesh and shows the body for what it is no sexual imagery through a females POV which helps us women see the reality of the form. This is what I want to carry through into my practice but exploiting the sexual aspect which has come from the gaze, like Saville does by “raising questions about society’s perception on the body” (Gagosian). – how it’s relation to space changes its perception of the body.

Reflection 14/04/21: The bold coloured projection worked well in Are You Watching? and my previous works, but interesting to see that I still have the strong visual of objectification now, through black and white and performance of eating. – almost a drastic change, but it isn’t?

Reflection 23/02/21: I decided to take this series of work as experimentation for Are You Watching? for Congruous. I felt they were boring and something was missing in these. I have realised projection is my medium that I work well with and with this experimentation of work I felt I couldn’t do much else with them.

I felt inspired after researching Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen to turn making in the kitchen to see how it would impact the viewers. “Food offers a giant area in which the social overwhelms the biological” (Weinstock, Rosler, 1981, p 83). There’s many things going on like making breasts, women hands doing the making, a female body in charge, a kitchen setting as well as baking materials. Reflection 12/03/21: Possibly too much going on, I tried to projection and immediately thought it wasn’t successful – I didn’t enjoy it. This was a period of time where I wasn’t sure where to go next with my work so I was trialing different spaces/materials early prep for the Interim exhibition.

I was in amazement at Rosler’s Semiotics in the Kitchen, she put all her anger and emotion into her film without words, she did it with action/body language. “the transformation of the woman herself into a sign in a system of signs” (Weinstock, Rosler, 1981, p 85). – This is what I have been doing in my previous films, using hand language with squeezing/dropping to evoke emotion/discomfort.

Reflection 04/01/2021: Relations to Womanhouse, Breasts to Eggs – they slowly change over the walls from breasts to eggs, and in baking they start as a lump of icing and slowly become breasts – a desirable material in both life/cinema in a shared domestic setting – performative yet destructive.

I wanted to point to how women are even still expected to conform to these ideas by using pink baking materials, a stereotypical gendered colour for women. It’s the same with the stereotypes that are put on children when they’re born. It’s good that these stereotypes are now being mixed see below:

Reflection 15/04/21: I have continued the experimentation of icing, it works well in relation to sweet desirables and women as a delicate food contrasted with a male violently eating it – Sweet Tooth B&W, is more visually clear in reference to the male, as with Baking it’s clear there was still a lot of uncertainty.

I wanted to get across this fight against an old fashioned patriarchal role (a gendered system where men take the dominance role out of both genders) e.g. the male = breadwinner, provides for the family and the female = homemaker, looks after the house, food and children. See Baking below, I make the breasts using pink icing to refer back to Consuming 2 except at a new angle with this constant imagery of the breast presenting women like a sweet/treat by society/men. I wanted to create the scenario of a cook show without romanticising the old fashioned cook shows as they glorify the kitchen role. From the 70s “the newly emerging feminist movement wanted to get women out of the typing pools and away from the kitchen sinks and into the boardrooms of the land” (Boycott, 2017). – The female hands suggests new way for women? Reflection 23/02/21: The ‘desirable’/’consumption’ like material seems to be favourable in my work/always pops up – I think this a path to follow for my final degree project.

Reflection 10/05/21: Upon reflection from the formative assessment and deeper research of abjection, I think there was signs of abjection early on within my work, disturbance and control, especially in this Baking series. Ideas of baking and the body physical making these dessert like objects to consume sets this level of discomfort as food is “surrounded with a series of taboos” (Kristeva, 1980, p 75) and it seems to be accentuated when it comes to the female form and consumption.

See below Baking ‘To Roll’, I visualised the aggressive destruction of women destroying this gendered role of the kitchen/patriarchy and being the new wave of women who has control. Whatever “derives form your experience of the actions” (Weinstock, Rosler, 1981, p 85) you see within my films. Reflection 15/04/21: As said previously, it’s clear I was unsure where I wanted to go with this, I was dipping into all areas but it’s clear to see this was a stepping stone for where my practice is now. Being able to use elements of consumption without feeling the need to involve the kitchen space.

I decided to revisit and incorporate My Verblist, my take on Richard Serra’s Verblist. It would work really well here to explore the use of materials & manipulations. I chose ‘To Roll’ from My Verblist. There’s this idea where beauty is a “legitimate and necessary qualification for a women’s rise in power” (Koo, 2004,  p 302). This is also used within glamorising women in the kitchen, not only to appeal to men but also other women, so they feel they should follow. Through using ‘To Roll’, I took the rolling pin and used it with force, much like Rosler did within Semiotics of the Kitchen, at 4.50, see below, she rolled the air and got more aggressive when using the utensil. I followed this but decided to roll the icing.

I aim to take these further and project them back into the kitchen. Note: Project on kitchen appliances may suggest ideas/visuals of Martha Rosler’s Body Beautiful series e.g. Hot Meat. This is what I will be experimenting with and researching after Christmas. I will also be continue to expand and explore with more clay figures to work with body image and types.

Reflection 23/02/21: These works didn’t have much substance, they felt flat! But, there are many aspects I have used e.g. the kitchen space and the issues that come with Rosler’s work, but confrontationally glamourising it similarly to how the cinema does.

1-1 with Jane 11/12/20, we discussed the way I wanted to to experiment more with placement projection and see how the setting adapted the portrayal of the film. See initial notes below:

We spoke of different environments to place the projections in. Lockdown and Light – a project created by Jane my tutor during lockdown to engage with artists through social media. Below are examples that caught my attention by Sara Heywood, these films encouraged me to experiment.

Sara Heywood, Lockdown and Light, 2020.

After seeing Heywood’s projections I wanted to experiment. I used the shower, the sink and the bath. NOTE: I didn’t want to think of any theories/concepts while I experimented. I wanted to focus on the exploration of material and setting and how it could be perceived and interpreted. – This was very beneficial.

Water has been active in my work within The Haze of Social Media series, it worked very well when trying to explore distortion and illusion. I wanted to return to this perception to see what it could add to my projections. See above, in Only Touch With CLEAN Hands projection in shower. There was something intimate and voyeuristic about this presentation as the bathroom is a place where you wash and cleanse yourself, nude – it adds to this visual that you shouldn’t be looking – this was also a comment made from my group crit 20/11/20. Peers felt mesmerised by Only Touch With CLEAN Hands and as though they were waiting for something else to happen. Hand sanitiser = only touch a women with clean hands, shower accentuate this.

Does the use of cinematic screen in an unusual and intimate place, such as the bathroom, convey more possible sexual objectification towards women like Mulvey explores?

Reflection 15/01/21: Recently I have learnt that within films  especially Reese Witherspoon’s films and views, pools and water are used to sexualised women e.g. Elle Woods in Legally Blonde is sprawled out in a bikini in an inflatable suggests it feeds the male gaze. There’s these expectations that come with this social place as “the pool is a pressure cooker of social expectations for women: to diet, shop, shave, tweezer, sculpt and tone” (Hess, 2019), it’s interesting to see in these works that the use of water does everything but explore these issues cinema does. Does it challenge these expectations.

Reviewing this, Psycho comes to mind, the aggressive gripping of the breasts reflects the famous scene of the male watching the women in the shower intensely before he kills her, the darkness surrounding the projection and the voyeurism, becomes sinister. Would a slowed down film like Douglas Gordons 24 hour Psycho appear more disturbing? I moved to the bath to experiment with running water/ripples to give the films a realistic identity, they brought the dropping to life. My Verblist – making the ‘to drop’ more impactful as the dropping breasts are confused with the splashes of water.

There was a hair left on the shower wall, it was sitting on the nipple of the projected breast. It gives the imagery of normalisation that women have hair on their body, it almost challenges the stereotypical women where we are all seen to be shaven to begin to be ‘idealised’.

See still below, Just a Ripple, the use of water added natural manipulation which I enjoyed this when I used water orbs within The Haze of Social Media, I liked that the image wasn’t edited but the perception of the camera was. The ripples from the water exaggerates the imagery of the sculpture, suggesting a more realistic image of women – reminds me of Jenny Saville, embracing the natural form.

It’s as though the colour pink from the image has leaked into the bath when creating the reflection. It also dispersed this pink tint of the shadows of the bathroom, see still below.

Reflection 28/01/21: I used the leak of colour in Are You Watching? across the breast sculptures and the environment as way to create a tunnel vision for the audience.

Reflection 29/02/21: I also used this explosion of pink for my Lockdown and Light 2021 submission. I used the projection & water ripples to emphasise the body and the portrayal of women in the cinema, the glamorisation of the figure.

See below, in Where is the Breast?, this photograph was when I was focused on the shadow of sculptures. They appeared like sweets – a comment Susan had made. The image below reminded me of ‘Where is Wally’, I placed a clay breast in the water to play with this illusion of what is real and what isn’t which I really liked.

Reflection 19/03/21: ‘sweets’ a comment that appears in a lot of my feedback – women as desirable edibles. I chose to continue this feedback throughout my current practice of To Bite and Sweet Tooth B&W currently in relation to seduction of the female form through the male gaze.

Reflection 19/03/21: Image below feel editorial/bright bold like a set up for magazine, does this effect the way the images are then seen? Use of body etc.

I used the sink as the projection immediately gave the idea that there are more breasts present than the 5 sculptures placed in the sink. Relate to CUBED. The image above looks like busy wallpaper and the imagery that something is growing around the sink – weird? It dominates the space.

NOTE: Should I project in the kitchen to see how this domination would come across differently with it being in a gender specific domestic setting, to involve myself in the projections, similar to Heywood. To try projecting in the kitchen – different surfaces e.g. oven, worktop, hob etc. May encourage ideas of gendered roles in the kitchen/the ‘idealised’ housewife?

Reflection 20/02/21: This is the image I chose to use for the Congruous exhibition because I loved the way it covered the kitchen space. I followed through with these thoughts and it worked even better in the kitchen – better relationship to sculpture, space and meaning of domestic roles & objectification. Projected on the wall almost displays the breasts to be viewed.

Maggi Hambling was mentioned during a tutorial with Jane 11/12/20 in relation to my sculptures of US from level 5 and CUBED. Hambling is a Feminist artist, she created a sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft a British Feminist, who was a write and a philosopher, an advocate for women’s equality rights from as early as the 1700s to honour her.

Maggi Hambling, A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft, 2020.

Her piece, A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft, see above, caused a large stir and controversy towards its viewers questioning why does she need to be nude. People believed it was inappropriate for a public sculpture and “sparked a furious reaction” (Thorpe, 2020) Instead of a clothed sculpture, “she produced an abstract sculpture which features a small, naked silver woman” (Thorpe, 2020) who was attractive and toned – an idealised women, like how Mulvey explored the cinema screen to “glamorise” women for their looks. Is confusing what Hambling is glamorising/celebrating women for?

The nude female form on display suggested to campaigners that sexual objectification of the body was present and wasn’t respected, see below, they covered up the sculpture with a text shirt, leaving the head of the sculpture out in the open.

Maggi Hambling, A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft, 2020.

It is true that “many influential men who are memorialised with clothed statues in London” (Thorpe, 2020) and no men are displayed naked how Hambling has displayed Wollstonecraft. I am torn between what I think. Men weren’t congratulated with a sculpture of themselves naked so why should a women? Is there a time and a place for a nude sculpture? And was this one?

Wollstonecraft supported equality rights for women, in her book, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, she spoke of how “women are told from their infancy, and taught by their mothers’ example, that a little knowledge of human weakness (properly called ‘cunning’), softness of temperament, outward obedience, and scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and if they are also beautiful, that’s all they need for at least twenty years.” (Wollstonecraft, 2010 , p 13).

Wollstonecraft acknowledged how women were brought up to fulfil this role for their husband and how beauty helps keeps a husband and responded “how grossly they insult us!” (Wollstonecraft, 2010, p 13). Hambling wanted to honour Wollstonecraft theories and to remind the public of them how far women have come and still must go, but I am unsure if she has. Has she conflicted with Wollstonecraft writings?

Hambling argued “she’s everywoman and clothes would have restricted her. Statues in historic costume look like they belong to history because of their clothes. It’s crucial that she is ‘now’” (Dex, 2020) After reading this I appreciated the nude female sculpture’s presentation for the now but I feel that those who won’t take the time to research and know, will be offended and would an art gallery been more suitable? Or would it have lead to the same reaction? OR is she also trying to normalise the female form and reduce this sexualisation of the body by placing it in a visible place for everyone?

Reflection 19/03/21: These too were issues I was fighting with while creating my clay figures, even now creating icing breasts in film being consumed like To Bite – where could I display this?

In response to Hambling’s, I wanted to create a sculpture with a head, this was a comment from Susan to see how the sculptures changes with a head. I hadn’t wanted to but after my research I was intrigued to try it on a more natural looking female form, unlike Hambling’s use of a ‘toned attractive women’.

See above, I didn’t change my original opinion, I felt it gave the sculpture too much personality. It also did remind me even more of fertility symbol sculptures which is something I have decided I don’t want to pursue but must be acknowledged that there’s different interpretations, audiences and presentation. I still want people to see the array of body shapes and sizes, that have no face – feels more connected to the issues I am exploring.