A mode of practice that I am interested in developing is the physical use of the human body to create artwork. This has been done in so many ways in the past from Yves Klein’s Anthropometry paintings, to Mona Hatoum’s use of actual human hair in her sculptures.

For my FMP of my foundation course I used hair removal wax strips to make etchings from, and also created a full scale etching of a woman, represented only by her (body) hair. I have found that the common theme in the artwork I most enjoy is the human body. This can be interpreted pretty loosely, and the body isn’t always the subject. For example I am really passionate about making garments and wearable art. I also have an interest in sculptures made from everyday objects, like the stools by Ai Wei Wei, or Tony Cragg’s piece Social Situation 1992. In each of these examples, the body is an integral aspect of the objects’ purpose; they would be obsolete without it.

Under this broad theme of working with the body, I’ve been thinking about the areas of contact our bodies make with surfaces and other bodies. It occurred to me when listening to a guided meditation. I was told to focus on the contact of body with the chair and floor. I immediately tried to picture the shape of the area of contact. It would be interesting to map this somehow, and eventually I would like to represent it three dimensionally. I am yet to develop the practicalities of this, it is very much still a concept in progress, but I think it is a starting point that has a lot of potential.