I decided to carry on with the idea of creating a piece from my collections. I decided on this as I found from the umbrella and dress which I created, it worked really well and was an idea I wanted to pursue further. Baring this in mind I decided to carry on experimenting.
Receipts…
Using a collections of receipts I have collected throughout the year so far, I decided to use them to create a piece of clothing. I wasn’t sure how well they would sew together as they aren’t like fabric like the make-up wipes so decided to buy a cheap top from a charity shop and use a glue gun to attach them to the top. I hoped this would create a piece which would hold and still look effective.
In a way the top produced the effect I wanted, my receipts made into a top … however they look just stuck on which to be fair they are. Although it was an easier way than attempting to sew them and hope they hold together, this piece doesn’t have the same effect as the dress I feel. Maybe this is due to the less effort that went in as there wasn’t the sewing and the measuring the right shape and attaching it all together to work, I already had a t-shirt to attach to. All I had to do was stick them to the t-shirt. I feel that this is too obvious and doesn’t give the same effect that the dress did. It doesn’t hold the shape the same or actually look like material made into clothing. Another factor perhaps is that the receipts don’t have the same abject feel like the wipes do? Is this more what makes the dress more successful than this piece? Maybe I do need a really peronal link portraying me and creating the abject feeling to the viewer to really fulfil the effect of the creation?
Looking back at Martin Parr’s work and the way he documents things through photography, like his piece ‘Common Sense’, where he took photographs in the UK and abroad of scenes and items which related to the consumer culture. He then edited these to make them overly vivid and bright to heighten this culture. This really made me want to document more things other than my drawings which I have been doing.
Earlier on before Christmas I had collected some shoes from charity shops to follow a strict rule similar to what some collectors put upon themselves religiously. So deciding to go back to the shoes I thought of taking photographs of various people in their different shoes. As they often say you can tell a lot about a person from their shoes…
Although after doing this I wondered why I had as it doesn’t actually relate to me … unless it were to be of my shoes but I am not really sure if this would be achieving what I want with portraying myself through my collections. Not sure whether this is taking a step back in the wrong direction…
Some of the recent drawings of different views of my days…
I decided to explore my collections with display. I have found that using my wipes to make things has worked quite well so far, so decided I would try covering my wipes on an object in the studio. I decided to cover a chair as it happened to be there and it was a fairly easy shape to cover. It worked quite well, however I don’t like the effect as much as physically making something with the wipes through sewing them together rather than just sticking them onto an object.
I also decided to try out this idea with my empty contact lens cases. Again though with this I don’t really feel it worked that well, so I will stick to experimenting with using the collections to make something, rather than just attaching them to an object.
I am not sure why I hadn’t thought of this idea earlier but as well as collecting contact lens cases I have began collecting my actual contacts. I decided on this as it is perhaps even more personal than the contact cases. The lenses have had contact with my actual eye so they give the reaction of disgust through this. The appearance of them changes once taken out of the eye due to them drying out and they go crisp and shrivelled.
I do quite like the look of these shrivelled up lenses, however perhaps if i were to keep them submerged in water they would keep their shape and perhaps give a better look. This is something I will therefore experiment with, and then play around with the display of these.
