In particular at the Tate Modern’s ‘Giacometti’ exhibition, one of the paintings named ‘Diego’ really caught my attention. This specific painting is of his brother and was created in 1953. He illustrates the figure as alone which I personally found really interesting. He places the figure alongside a grey background with dull blue tones and uses dark black lines to generate negative space contrasting between the body and the background. I was so captivated by this work I bought a print of it at the end of the viewing, however seeing the painting ‘in the flesh’ was somewhat different. Being able to see the image on the scale in which the artist intended it to be observed is one way in which it was a valuable experience but in particular, the paint textures and the expressive mark making is something you just can’t see with a picture of the painting. For example whilst looking at the painting I noticed fluid brushstroke. In addition, I could also see in what way Giacometti had constructed layers inside the painting, with thin paint in some parts and even with some of the canvas showing in parts then building up a thicker quantity of paint around and in the figure which is the center of the piece. For instance, the head is greatly worked in with paint and solid in appearance. The reproduced print sold in the shop is in far less detail and seems like only a reminder of the physical work.

I went to see ‘Giacometti’ at the Tate Modern which was showcasing the Swiss-born artist Alberto Giacometti’s work. Granted, Giacometti remains perhaps most well-known for his distinctive bronze elongated figures which are practically instantaneously recognisable. However, in this exhibition, he is shown as an artist with an interest in surfaces and materials, with a number of rooms showcasing countless pieces using a wide-range of media. The display consisted of books, plasters, and sketches not often seen before. The showing takes the spectator on a jam-packed five decades’ development of the artist’s working lifetime. For instance, the show includes his later works such ‘Walking Man I’ completed in 1960 but moreover includes former works such as ‘Head of a Woman’ (Flora Mayo) made in 1926. It is also obvious during the course of the show that his subjects were regular, for example, one of his greatest used models was his younger brother Diego and as I walked about the exhibition I observed loads of paintings and sculptures using him as a model. Throughout the viewing of this exhibition, I thought about the total mass of work Giacometti had produced over his lifetime. In my opinion, the exhibition is celebratory of just how hard working the artist was. The exhibition was organised by Tate Modern and ‘Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Paris’ with both sculptures and paintings. For example some of the paintings where ‘Diego Seated 1948’ and ‘Caroline in a Red Dress c.1964-5’, as well as sculptures including ‘Falling Man 1950’, ‘The Hand 1947’ and ‘Man Pointing 1947’. Overall, the exhibition included more than 250 pieces.

This is the first time that I have completed a professional course in such a form. There has never been a study in China in this form. Although first try this way to finish the homework, in this process there are a lot of difficulties, but that a new attempt, or give me a lot of new things and is of great help for future study.

For task 1&2,  learned from a book in the operation of a picture link to the online text, images, will be a combination of these two kinds of query knowledge together can know to want to know more information, also can a more comprehensive understanding. Sometimes we can go to the Internet to find relevant knowledge when we read some interesting words or pictures and want to know more about them. This is what I learned in this assignment.

For task 3&4, in this job and joined the magazines and literature on the ways to understand knowledge, now in our daily life, news, magazines, has become the important way we used to kill time, and it is in this process we also can learn the knowledge we want to know.

For task 5&6, this job is very interesting and everyone who like design will have their own like and worship designers or design brand, this work let us from the designers of love, to get to know him through his work of design inspiration and the source of design inspiration, online to find a large number of relevant images, in the text, and then choose your favorite photo for analysis, you can learn from this picture how designers find inspiration from the image and to compose, this is also in the study at ordinary times we get inspiration.

For task 7&8, this work is for me to finish all the homework in the most difficult time, the job requires you to first go to see a professional essay, and then write the feeling after you read the article, thoughts, and ideas. First for my English is not my native language, reading such a professional articles from time to tome a lot of new words don’t know, cause I see article is difficult, will the new words one by one query not bashful to understand what the article said some, so step it took me a long time to complete. Then read the article and understand the probably said something then because I don’t really know in French history, some time before all don’t know what happened, so they are going to online query what some of France at that time to finish the homework. After finishing this assignment, I realized that I should know more about the history of various countries during my study, so I could better understand some fashion sources.

For task 9&10, this work mainly revolves around moral two words to, moral this two word is our life must abide by the virtue, but in today’s society there are many people in order to achieve a goal or will choose by hook or by crook. In fashion to have a lot of advertising violates this principle, has taken a lot of sexual images, or make some extreme behavior to command the attention of consumers, in order to increase the consumption of product. This assignment gives me a better understanding of the principle that we should always consider ethics when designing our own work.

That’s all I learned in this semester in this module.

When I look at this picture the first feeling is that this picture gives a very strong sexual implication.

In a large size of plain white bed a woman didn’t wear pants, only wear the dark tights, but even wear above the knee socks, exposed to the important part of the human body, with just one line only brand name to cloak, reflected a kind of excessive sex appeal. Lying on a woman’s face also is very sexy and expression, the expression may be wearing normal is very charming, but under this dress is violated the ethics, let see this photo of a person feel very uncomfortable, who shot this photo is very immoral, he regardless of morality, the two words only want to make their products can maximum limit. Designers want to make their work to the market selling a starting point of this is true, but that does not conform to the rules of advertising can only be brought about by people, criticism, maybe he got a lot of topics, but it will bring some consumer incorrect influence.

American Apparel, which opened its first store in 2003, has more than 110 stores in the United States and 35 major cities worldwide, with sales of $250 million.
In America, where 96% of the clothes are imported, it does the opposite:
Made in Downtown LA
Vertically integrated production in the United States, located in downtown Los Angeles AA factory has 3500 workers, now it is the biggest single garment factories, production of more than 210000 shirts every day, 3800 SKU. It is a really big company, this is a fashion in the modern influential companies, the company in the promotional products when took the photos and let people see, this will have a big impact on people, maybe a lot of people who haven’t this judgment will think it is to gain social acceptance in the community, will affect their psychological cause irreversible.

Advertising to AA models are amateurs, mostly from AA company or some consumers to yourself and the location is selected in AA office, shooting technique is the reference to the style of the 70-80 – s Playboy, give a person the sense of sexy and not out of reach, is like your neighbors or colleagues, friends or classmates around you.
Promotion target, each enters a city to open stores, AA will not choose the mass media, but pick distinctive niche free magazine advertisement, or in a local influential Bloger deliver ads on the website.
Shop sales promotion, product design is basic, although sell but and colorful, the clerk is all style, AA boss will interview each shop salesman, if there is no style, shall not be accepted.
When it comes to this, we have to mention the founder of the AA, Dov charney, the Canadian who started buying Hanes t-shirts from the United States and started selling them in Canada. Before the establishment of AA, Dov t-shirts have been engaged in the wholesale business, he has certain market space is a lot of enterprises can’t buy good quality and can be printed t-shirts, t-shirts wholesale still occupy larger share of AA, especially basic white and black.
It’s fair to say that Dov is a madman, such as an advertisement for his girlfriend to be a model, even his own naked ass, and he also promotes some avant-garde sexual ideas within the company.

Finally, I would like to say that in the field of fashion, which has a lot of influence in today’s society, we should abide by the relevant ethical principles, so that people can rest assured shopping in a safe and comfortable environment.

After reading chapter 1 of ” Fashion Media: Past and Present”, I see Sanda Miller talks a  lot about fashion magazines. It seems that the emergence of the fashion magazines to have begun in eighteenth-century France and it really heavily depended on fashion. Like Miller says,”They have functioned not only as repositories of the progress of sartorial fashion and the most up-to-date social, cultural and artistic developments but also as self-styled barometers of taste.” As a very important carrier of fashion development, fashion magazines began to flourish in France as the leading fashion field.

But there was also a movement called ” The Enlightenment” during that generation, the movement has had a great impact on France’s economy, politics and art. So many people were shocked that the magazine was still being published through this barbaric time in history, when essentially it all happened because of view of opinion. This is why I think Miller questioned whether it was a fashion magazine or a journal of taste as it didn’t last long and caused a gap in fashion media.

One of the most incredible things that happened to me when I was reading this was that the magazine had changed its name three times. “The first proper women’s fashion magazine was Le Cabinet des Modes published by Jean Antoine Brun from 1785 until 1795, when it was renamed Le Magazine des Modes nouvelles francaises et anglaises; it was published under this title between 1796 and 1789, when it finally acquired the significant title Le journal de lamode et fu gout.” The  latter’s shrt existence coincided with the French Revolution, and Miller also wonder the fashion magazine in that generation is whether it was regarded not just as a record of style but also as a barometer of taste whose influence extended to a prescriptive function.

A lot of  people stand with Miller and agree that fashion began in Paris “everything began in Paris.” Paris still stood on ceremony as the fashion capital of the world. However, Paris was upstaged by other Italian and American fashion labels. Paris managed to maintain their position in high fashion however by the mid-1990s the fact was that French fashion wasn’t selling the way it used to and the French designers were by then in the history.

In conclusion,I really agree with Miller that although being separate identities, art and fashion do go in hand-in-hand but I don’t agree totally that France was the birth place of fashion media. The first fashion magazine may have been published in France however I do not share the same opinion that fashion media began in France because it is regarded as universal, fashion comes from everywhere. Fashion is Art and Art did not suddenly appear but grew and developed over time and travelled through different countries and cultures as did fashion. It cannot simply be pinned to one place as fashion is art and art is in everything. And of course, France is the most important part in the developing of fashion, no matter what.

This piece was the result of my film project whereby I focused on how mark-making and rhythm coincided with each other; the piece is 4 sheets of A2 in size. I would most likely scale the piece down to A1 and to simplify it, I would stick to the same colour in varying tones and shades. I feel by scaling the piece down, it won’t have such a powerful impact, nor would the individual have had sufficient space to express the emotions they were feeling when reacting to the music they were played. The reason for the various colours was so each layer had an element of the individual’s personality in the piece, so changing the colours to a certain colour scheme, I feel, would take away from the spontaneous and personal elements of the piece since I didn’t know what colour each of them would choose to paint with. Also, using the same colour scheme may mean that all the colours would blend and potentially create quite a bland outcome.

My piece of work for ‘Manifesto’ was a 35 x 25 cm canvas. I was originally going to produce x3 of these with different self-portraits, containing a different message in each one which is why it was so small. However due to not having enough time I only produced one, thinking sometimes less is more. I was happy with the way it turned out but the only thing I would change is the size of the canvas. I wouldn’t complicate or simplify the piece but I would probably make it a lot neater and more defined rather than some of the writing being wonky and messy in places. My ‘Manifesto’ piece contains a strong meaning and personally I feel a work of this depth belongs on a larger scale for all audiences to see.

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.

Missing
Peju Alatise
2014
Mixed media

‘Missing’ is a series of textile printed canvases with the silhouettes.  Positioned with spaces against each other, but with backgrounds of textile prints of what appears to look like Dutch- wax resist fabrics, patterned in various colours. They all individually portray the identity of female children. What we refer to with great sympathy and care ‘The Chibok girls of 2014’. These girls are victims of the result of what is the war between government and terrorism, they are the rope in the tug of war, and caught in between and made to rot. They are the victims of what would futuristically be in the months after their kidnapping as the tragedies of a war. Sold into sex slavery, born into it, physically abused and violated, never to remain the same again, always with the dredging memory. Alatise paints a silhouette of the head of anonymous girls in the centre of each canvas, some of the 85- 96 canvases and empty spaces, are bold face images of little girls in primary school hairstyles. With the background of the ever glowing textile fabrics. Some left bare and background created dark to contour and make the shape of heads.  Some spaces left empty as they represent in better significance the physical absence of the abducted girls. With rimed textile boarders that still capture a spirit of the body taken away.

In recent times the economic depression within Nigeria has led to alot of poor turn of events, other than just the depletion of the structures which govern Nigeria’s societies such as ‘Religious leadership, Family values, Political Governance, Education and Economy’, it’s also made people lose a lot of hope with regards to seeing a secure future in the land of their birth. Thus making the hard decision to move through extenuating circumstances to gain greener pastures. The circumstances I speak of are links directly related to the recent news outbreak of the African immigrants who sought to migrate to Europe for work, however became the master ploys in the grand scheme of human traffickers, gangs and other ill-fated souls within the Libyan community.                                                                                                                            Remembering the connection between the instances of rapes, child prostitution, sex trafficking of minors, as sexual harassment circumstances that the African migrants might have endured, I then thought of the abducted Chibok girls who may have endured the exact same or equal tragedies. It’s a terrible truth that some people have to endure such harsh circumstances and be manipulated into the traumatic situations which they might find themselves in through these pursuits for a better futures. It is truly sad.

Reference

Pejualatise.com. (2017). PEJU ALATISE « ARTIST’S STATEMENT «. [online] Available at: http://www.pejualatise.com/artist-statement/ [Accessed 6 Dec. 2017].