University Campus Suffolk

Referring back to a previous entry talking about concrete, I have made the trophy mounts for the cameras out of concrete. To do this I firstly made a mould on the vacuum former, using wood to make the original die and then vac forming over this, I made several different shapes and sizes in order to get a variety of trophy mounts sizes. I then filled these moulds with a concrete mix, and left them to go off. Once set I am left with solid lumps of moulded concrete that I carefully drill into to create the holes for the plugs that will hold both the camera on the front and the mirror plate that will be used for hanging.

The second body of work I am displaying for my degree show is a wall of mounted CCTV cameras. The idea developed from my previous idea of mounting conversations or speech, my piece ‘Glow’ is an example of this…

We are living in an age of ever increasing surveillance; CCTV cameras are a very common vision on the streets, to quote government statistics ‘each person in the country is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily’, Daily Mail, 2009, Revealed: Big Brother Britain has more CCTV cameras than China, [online], accessed 2013, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1205607/Shock-figures-reveal-Britain-CCTV-camera-14-people–China.html#ixzz2UD3rseLP.

So what I wanted to do was to create a body of work that addressed this issue, I wanted to give the power back to the people, taking away the threat of being caught on camera. I chose to do this by creating a series which I loosely titled ‘Urban Hunting’. The series of work is based around the idea of big game hunting, as we are captured by the cameras, what would happen if the hunters became the hunted? Ripping them from their natural environment and displaying them as trophies on a wall for all to marvel at, they suddenly become less of an object of hate and more an object of desire. You want to display these as you have worked hard capturing them.

And all the friends lay down the flowers, sit on the banks and drink for hours, talk of the way they saw him last, local boy in the photograph…

On Sunday 14th April 2013 I headed down to Brighton to meet my very talented and motivated girlfriend Kate who was travelling down from Hull to take part in the Brighton Marathon… Here’s the plug: She is celebrating turning 30 by taking part in 30 sporting events for 30 different charities over the next year, hoping to raise £30,000 (£1000 for each), she has named this event Project30 and I urge you good good people reading this to give her Facebook page a look or her just giving page, just look up Project30 and it will come up, it’s for some really great charities… Plug over!!!

Brighton is a place of wonder, I have been before but years ago, I very much enjoyed my time there, but as with many tourist driven coastal towns, as well as great scenery and fun times AND Jamie’s Italian, which was Totes Amazeballs (been trying to get that new addition to the English language in for ages), there is also a large community of homeless folks, trying their luck with a tourist hotspot in a hope of making a little bit of money to feed themselves and perhaps find shelter for the night. With suck a huge event like the Brighton Marathon you would like to think that with the revenue it brings in to the local community they would distribute this to local homeless charities and shelters, I know I certainly tried to do my bit for the homeless whilst I was visiting Brighton.

Jane, I realize this has nothing to do with art but I thought why not give it a mention as my work is politically fuelled and I feels this falls under that category.

Anyway… whilst walking through the Lanes of Brighton, I happened to come across a little boutique shop, their main supplier seemed to be Vivian Westwood, so of course it had a very quirky window display. The photo here reminded me of my cones and bollards that I have made, replacing the models head with a camera had made the dummy an object of surveillance, I have spent the past few months sourcing ‘dummy cameras’ for my work and here was and entire shop window made up of ‘Dummy Cameras’. What I can take from this is future possibilities for using cameras within my practice and exploring surveillance within a completely new environment. It reminds me of the droids from Star Wars – The Clone Wars, you can imagine these mannequins walking around recording your actions and every move, perhaps this is an insight into how the government plans to move forward with future surveillance in our Big Brother generation.

It’s a crazy situation, but all I need are cigarettes and alcohol.

Today I have ordered a load of photos from Snapfish, against popular belief I have kept records, in the form of photographs, of all the work I have been doing within my studio space. The photos will be used to assemble a photo sketchbook that I will write notes in explaining every stage of my thought and making processes. I don’t really keep sketchbooks, I know this is something that shocks and appals the members of the art world, maybe one day I will change my practice, but when I get an idea I tend to make it straight away, whether it’s in mock up form or complete form. Yes I do end up with a hell of a lot of models or completed works lying around but I have a tendency, you may have noticed, of leaving things to the last minute, so if I gave all my time to sketchbook work then I don’t think I would ever have anything made. I do however acknowledge the use of a sketchbook for jotting down and exploring ideas, I just tend not to use it.

Is this wrong of me?

Should I be exploring all possibilities in some form of a document in order to get to a final product or does trial and error work just as well?

I don’t feel it hiders my practice, I went for years jotting notes and keeping sketchbooks and in the end I was just left with a book of confusion with hardly none of what I had written or drawn actually making it to see the light of day, at least with thinking and doing I am exploring the creation of work physically, taking problems on as they arise and creating works one after another instead of locking them away in the form of a doodle.

Presenting two completely different works in my degree show is has its advantages, it allows diversity of work, allowing the viewer to see the range you work in and not just seeing one particular piece and pigeon holing you into that one genre. As an artists point of view though, it has allowed me to experiment with many ideas, not getting bored or stuck with one particular, if I do then I have other pieces to be working on.

I think there is variety within my work; I seem to want it to be a factor of my work, where you perhaps never know where the artist is going next.

For my dissertation I was looking at activist art, in particular the art of Peter Kennard and Simon Bedwell. Kennard’s work is based around his views on war, government, corruption, oil, environment and the Earth itself. He has spent his career presenting his collage work to the masses, making people aware of what we as a race are doing to this planet. He views us as the problem, his work is a constant reminder that war, poverty, third world debt, are all man made situations that people in power choose to ignore or keep discreet for their own gains.

Kennard’s practice has always contained collage, that is what he is known for, taking photos and using a cut and paste method to create his work, but he has found times where his work has appeared outdated and repetitive, so in 2002 he joined forces with fellow activist artist Cat Picton Phillips to produce art in response to the invasion of Iraq, since then it has evolved to confront power and war across the globe. Using the form of digital collage it has given Kennard a new media to work in and produce works a lot quicker and on larger scale than ever before. KennardPhillips work shows daring confrontation, standing up to all governments worldwide and addressing issues that many shy away from. Although Kennard still makes handmade collage it is his variety in his practice that allows him to work on many different subjects at once.

Simon Bedwell is also an activist artist; however, where Kennard’s work was addressing the state of this world, Bedwell’s work was a direct protest against the YBA scene and the galleries that controlled the art that was shown within them during the 1990s. Bedwell made a name for himself as part of the collaborative group BANK; their main objective was to hold shows that did not follow the same regime of the big money galleries. BANK was against the corporations that controlled the art world through monetary value and their monthly exhibitions were made up of work by their members, often looking very thrown together, but always providing an entertaining event, BANK hit its heights in 1995 – 1996 and were critically acclaimed at this point. The problem being though that once BANK had hit success they became a part of that system they were fighting so hard to be against, with members rapidly leaving to pursue their own careers and success BANK disbanded completely. Bedwell is now a successful artist in his own right but he now seems to be embracing the big money corporations and has international shows at large galleries.

Has he lost sight of what originally made him fight against this system??

After so long of fighting against it, do you just have to accept you cannot win and so embrace the system for personal gain??

Is Kennard right with the way he has progressed through his practice??