University Campus Suffolk

This is going to be a picture post where I upload some recent images and talk about them, then later on today I’ll upload a video and do a longer written post on what I’ve been up to recently.

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These images were from a little mirror experiment that I did in my studio space. What I wanted to explore was the angles and how images can be never-ending. It was fascinating to see how you can reflect in a reflection.

During this time I was still making portraits as well as exploring other ideas.

The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again) (1975):

I know a girl who just looks at her face in the medicine cabinet mirror and never looks below her shoulders, and she’s four or five hundred pounds but she doesn’t see all that, she just sees a beautiful face and therefore she thinks she’s a beauty. And therefore, I think she’s a beauty, too, because I usually accept people on the basis of their self-images, because their self-images have more to do with the way they think than their objective-images do. Ch. 4: Beauty

In some circles where very heavy people think they have very heavy brains, words like “charming” and “clever” and “pretty” are all put-downs; all the lighter things in life, which are the most important things, are put down. Ch. 4: Beauty

Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, “So what.” That’s one of my favorite things to say. “So what.” “My mother didn’t love me.” So what. “My husband won’t ball me.” So what. “I’m a success but I’m still alone.” So what. I don’t know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget. Ch. 7: Time

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

“I test the limits of myself in order to transform myself”

“To be a performance artist, you have to hate the theatre. Theatre is fake…The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real.”

– Marina Abramovic

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/oct/03/interview-marina-abramovic-performance-artist

Chat with video artist Emily Richardson.

I found our tutorial really engaging and worthwhile, it was refreshing to talk to someone who has no idea who you are and can only go by what you show them. This made me think about my audience and how I want to reach them. I want my artwork to communicate emotions with its audience I want them to associate things with it like their favourite song, or something along those lines. We got talking about how I could do this and how I could force my portraits further.

We came up with a little list which I’ll just write out here:

*Think about how the work is going to be presented: would I like to make a video, a photograph or something in between. Do I want to mix materials? Switch things up, perhaps.

*The words that I add to my portraits all come from my voice so instead of being a metaphorical voice why don’t I record my voice? Why don’t I video myself saying these things? You’d definitely get more of an insight into the work.

*Remember artists who inspire me and find new inspirations too; Marina Abramovic would be a fantastic person for me to look at. Also the 70’s when Feminism rose to prominence in the art industry – spoke about Cindy Sherman. Gillian Wearing would also be good to study too as she takes on personas of people surrounding her, making herself over to look like them.

*What’s fact or fiction?

*Look at video artists and how they use the medium, try to understand that a video can be anything and just as limitless as a camera.

*Perhaps go back to projections – explore the possibility of using old methods with a new mind set.

IT’S TIME TO GET OUT OF THE SKETCHBOOK!!!

Quite frankly I’ve been under a lot of stress recently so much so that I’ve made myself ill and I can’t keep doing that, it’s not healthy. I need to find that inspiration again. It’s still there but often supressed by other things – like heading into the studio as much as possible. I need to be honest with myself and set up goals; if I can’t make it in because I need to do work at home I just need to stick to that and not overdo it. You see all my programs are on my desktop computer at home and so sometimes coming into uni is a bit of a waste, I need to get my head around this and figure out a plan of action.

So here is a small to do list and I’ll cross it off post by post:

*Research artists, watch films, and draw inspiration from anywhere.

*Get experimenting outside of the sketchbook I have enough material for now – Projections, speech recording, videos, webcam – anything.



Intermission:

I did a random photo shoot the other day to get back in front of the camera. Looking back over the photos via editing I’ve decided to not include text realising that text can sometimes limit your audience and I don’t want language to be a barrier. It’s refreshing to be back in front of my camera though I need to move on and push my work even further. Just how I will do this has been annoying me for the past few weeks, until I had a very inspiring conversation with the Video artist Emily Richardson.

I’m currently writing a longer post on that though so please bear with me!