The book I have consumed is Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction by Julian Stallabrass – 2004, Oxford University Press Inc., New York. Within this text, many ideas are discussed with reference to Contemporary artists and their impact from certain external factors. On page 7 Stallabrass writes ‘postmodernism was meant to have swept such concerns [of avant-garde activity] aside, challenging the category of high art itself, or at least delighting in its pollution by myriad cultural forms.’ In other words, Stallabrass discusses the ideals of cultural and contextual influence within artwork as being the shift that postmodernism in the early 1970s was to take.

Stallabrass takes a Historical approach to the development of art mediums, concepts and movements, for example, on page 16 ‘as Julie H. Reiss has it, installation – born in the 1960s – has revived from its long slumber through the commercially driven years of the 80s.’ He later adds ‘1990s art was the rise of installation art’. As an artist with an interest in installations this extract shows its utility to me as a practicing artist and helps to define that ‘Installation is not a medium-specific or itself a medium.’

The brief we were given on 26^th September was to create a passport with which, a form of my identity is displayed using various mediums. Immediately I intended to use elastic bands, wool, thread, nails, and hair (for physical identity), using textures to create a messy, unfinished product, representing the unfinished aspect of growth as an aging adolescent.

Somewhat resembling Tadek Beutlich’s work, I began building layers of elastic bands and wool. I then inserted flat-headed pins into the structure to symbolise an intimidating exterior.

Tadek Beutlich- (Vibrations 6)/Feltbug, 1984

Content with the size and shape of my passport, I used thread woven within it as a medium of suspension, to further represent the fragility of life.

Finally, the structure was impulsively wrapped in red paper -leaving the thread as a means of presentation. Held together with masking tape, to show a visible attempt at containing the structure, the words ‘DO NOT OPEN’ were written, cautioning those of the distorted interior.

Single-line blind contours were drawn on another piece of red paper depicting personal things of importance and folded it into an origami lotus flower, distorting the images by folds and drawing technique. This was suspended just above my passport, as though personifying the brain (memories), and soul (feelings).

Approaching this task again, I would pour white paint over the mass of elastic bands and nails to conceal it rather than use paper to completely mask the object; thus, representing how the private side of myself is hidden but not entirely submerged.