The book I decided to study was by Jessica Warboys, called “Hill of dreams”. This book marks the launch of Warboys’ new film ‘Hill of dreams’ and the process she has gone through to create it. Warboys’ film is influenced by her own personal and collective memories which she portrays through a wide range of media including performance, film, sculpture and painting.

However, the book mainly focuses on Warboys landscape scenes and the various techniques she used to make her work unique, such as “combining her painting materials with natural elements, such as water of the sun, and applying pigment directly onto large-scale canvases before submerging them into the sea and allowing the waves to distribute the colour”.

Warboys’ uses the film to tell her own personal memories through a third person account, as “Hill of dreams” follows a man through landscapes natural and painted, which is located in the hills of Caerleon near the River Usk. I believe that Warboys’ is directing this film to a contemporary audience due to her use of mixed medias and to all ages, as exploration and nature enlivens everyone to see the world.

I found the structure of the book very intriguing because the first 40 pages are photographs of her landscape scenes, performances and paintings, which she has warily considered the compositions, allowing the reader to focus on each specific piece and create their own stories, before reading the artists biography on engaging with the landscapes and their embedded histories.

Ekardt, P, (2016), Hill of dreams: Jessica Warboys. London: St Ives, Tate Publishing

During the summer, I took part in a museum project where my final piece would be hung in a local museum (Watford museum). As part of my museum project I decided to create a 3D structural piece of work that included 10 hexagons and squares all hung at different lengths from the ceiling. Each square/ hexagon used a different media which represented an aspect of my theme “The Syrian culture and war”. This contemporary composition was influenced by Nancy Spero’s “Maypole take no prisoners”, because they are all connected by string demonstrating unity, however when the audience actually focuses on each individual piece, they are either reminded of the Syrian past with all their sophisticated geometrical patterns and architecture or the present which is war, explosions, damaged buildings and death.

When hanging my work, I displayed the work so that all my bright geometric pieces were at the top, whilst the dark rough surfaces had longer string and were at the bottom. I believe this composition worked well because I was able to overlap the pieces making the overall design appear complicated, which may exemplify the idea that the Syrian war has so many layers and complications, which will need to be resolved before the country can attempt growing and restoring their sophistication.

If I had a larger room and unlimited amount of space, I would have liked to hang my hexagons/squares from string which was hanging from different corners of the room so that they are all overlapping one another and at different angles, which would mean I would have to do designs on both sides of the piece of wood, this would allow me to recreate the confusion and chaos that the Syrian civilians are probably feeling. I would also make lots more hexagons and squares and make them different sizes, representing the idea that no matter who you are the war affects everyone the same.