I began thinking about my collecting of my personal and quite disgusting items and thought about display again. It is something I have moved away from a lot this year but is something that is obviously needed in whatever type of work within art.
As my work is currently reflecting myself through these personal collections and repetitive daily routines, I wanted to find a way to display my collections that reflects this. I think the cabinet was a good starting point with this, with the contacts all lined up in uniformed rows; it reflected my morning routine.
Thinking about how else I could display these daily collections of contact lens cases, contact lenses, eyelashes, hair, used wipes, and cotton wool etc, I thought to be able to visually see all these collections for each day it would be best if I could display them all as a group for each individual day.
I only have Saturday’s and Sunday’s collections at the moment, and when first displayed like this I wasn’t entirely sure on it. I wasn’t sure if it was just a bit repetitive and not very interesting. However after them being up in my space for a few hours, allowed me to keep seeing them and reflecting on them I began to think perhaps they did work quite well like this. Maybe I don’t necessarily need to attach all my collections together like I have been doing. Maybe they do work well just as daily collections in their own right? I think it would be really interesting to see how it would look if I covered a whole wall with these daily collections. Perhaps it would be more appealing and abject too. For now I need to keep collecting these days.
I think I have been putting off uploading this video of my performance piece I did the other day. I suppose in a way it shows people what I actually look like without this mask on and is something I don’t really let anyone see. But if I do use it as part of my degree show then obviously it is going to be seen by many people so I might as well get it over and done with now.
I wasn’t sure on whether or not I wanted music but thought it might lose the viewers interest if there was just silence. It was decided on this piece of music as it is quite a long repetitive piece which is mirrored in me removing my make-up; the long boring process. It also sounds like tension is building; hopefully making the viewer uncomfortable at what is coming perhaps?
I still feel really uncomfortable at the thought of people seeing this…
Emma Bowles, ‘Make-up Removal’. Performance, Film. April 2013. Filmed by: Melissa McGinniss
I recently bought a mannequin hand on Ebay as I have now began collecting cotton pads from when I remove my nail polish. I thought by having a mannequin hand to work with it would allow me to use the collection with this hands in perhaps a more bsuccessful way than without? I didn’t notice when I bought this hand that it was coming from Hong Kong and was estimated to be here at the end of May which is too late. Therefore I decided that I would cast my own hand and make a plaster hand from this instead. In a way this would also be a lot more personal to me and reflect me more as it would be the exact representation of my hand.
With Matt’s help in layering my hand in mod-rock I began this process. After the cast was made plaster was poured in and my hand was created. When removing it from the cast some of the mod-rock got stuck to the hand so that will need some sanding down. I am quite pleased with how this has turned out considering I am not really a fan of sculpture. Here are a few photos of the hand before sanding.
Ending up winning a bid on Ebay I had forgotton about. So I now own even more mannequinns and limbs…
They are quite old and scuffed and seem to be missing a few parts especially on the standing torso. It has no base and the pole fits on the left thigh… Not sure how this was meant to stand like this. In a talk with David this morning he suggested the best thing to do was to to weld on a metal plate, weld on the pole at the desired height in the centre and attach a base. I spoke to Josh about helping me do all this as metal work isn’t my area and I had no idea how to go about this really. Josh was a great help and welded on the parts for me, which was probably the safest option… This mannequinn also came with a rather creepy looking head with blue hair; not really what I wanted with my work, and I also wanted it to have some resemblance to my previous mannequinn I purchased.
After it was welded it already looked a lot better but due to the contrast with the metal and the old scuffed body, for it to really work with my work in my space I felt it needed to be white to have a more clean feel and look nicer. Therefore I spray painted it and it looks as good as new now!
Thinking about the repetitiveness of my daily routine and other items to collect. I have began to collect my used cotton wool balls which I use after cleansing my face.
With the cotton wall balls I am beginning to collect, I decided that I wanted to do something with them such as attaching them together, to become a piece as a whole. I decided on stitching them together with gaps as I didn’t want it just to look like one massive piece of cotton wool. I wanted the viewer to be able to see each individual ball showing a story of that morning or evening. This reminded me of Alexandra Bircken’s work again with her use of stitching the same material together representing different parts and is something my work keeps leaning towards.
Perhaps these cotton wool balls are abject enough to work just on their own. Perhaps they don’t necessarily need to be attached together. Or maybe they do just on a larger scale? I need to play around with the arrangement of these I think, as I feel they could work well due to the remains of the skin like the wipes being left on them. There is something really quite interesting about them. I just need to find the best way of displaying themto really give the abject feeling to the viewer that I want to give. Especially if I were to use them in my degree show. The arrangement and display would be a very important part.
