‘Look close enough and you will find many hidden treasures.’

As an artist I find myself exploring the general public. I go out with my camera and take photographs of anything that I am drawn to and more often than not this is the unnoticed. The above image was taken at Oxford Street in London a few months ago and I have used it to represent my practise purely because it does exactly this. Oxford Street is a well-known tourist attraction and within the image defines this, such as the obvious black cab and big red bus. But as you can see those were not my focus – the taxi and bus is blurred – at all, the lady was. My quote explains exactly this, most people go to London to see the ‘obvious black cab and big red bus’ but I look closer than this and by doing so I believe I find many hidden treasures.

Oxford Street, London 2017

Throughout my years of practice, I typically create paint on canvas that are relatively average, not too big or too small. Also, despite the fact that I discuss and borrow ideas from other artists, I tend to physically work alone in a secluded space. Although I enjoy my solitude, I would like to radically increase the size of the surface I work on; perhaps the canvas could stretch across the whole room and coil itself around the ceiling or walls. As well as the size, I’d like to invite a range of artists to colour the blank canvas with their personal style of art thus creating a large collaborative artwork. It’d be fascinating to see contrasting artworks blend into one entity sharing one body; realistic portraits painted amid landscape inspired by cubism or the canvas could be embedded into an installation/ sculpture. The paintings could be animated by projecting a film on the canvas. This supersized project is a chance for artists to play and experiment; it’s a safe space that allows artists to create spontaneously without stressing about judgement.

Using When Faith Moves Mountains by Francis Alys as my inspiration for this perception-based transformation, I would reduce the numbers of performers within the piece to leave just one volunteer moving item by item of furniture with industrial anomalies from one side of a room to the other, mirroring the exact format the state once existed in. This process would continue in its cycle 500 times to replicate the number of volunteers for Alys’ performance. The simplification of this piece would indicate a shift towards independence while presenting an underlying desire to be connected with others. It will also be an interesting psychological study to witness what would happen if an onlooker got involved to assist the worker which, unlike with the scale of Alys’ piece, may be a plausible outcome.

Francis Alys- When Faith Moves Mountains, 2002

A cynical, ironic presentation that compass feminist art and theory.

My practise explores what it is to be a woman but not just in the classical sense as through my research i have gleaned at there different strains of classification of what being a woman is. It is also heavily reminiscent of feminist artwork and looks to female artists (not necessarily feminist artists) as I feel that their techniques and use of certain media was something I could use and work with for my own project. I have chosen to use embroidery but in an ironic fashion playing upon its own stereotype of being “woman’s work” but I wanted to play upon the ironic themes and representations I have researched and will feature within my work. I wanted to use typography and imagery (basic due to the time consuming technique of embroidery) to highlight the errors in female representations and misogynistic statements which are still frequent in today’s society. I would like to do a series of embroidery pieces that show in detail a variety of misogynistic statements that highlight the backwards thinking of most people (both male and female and everything in between). As I’ve continued my research I’ve discovered prejudices and negative statements within certain groups in communities such as the transgender community to name one, it shows that on a whole the world and society need to learn to love and accept those who don’t fit into what is “common” as nothing is normal, it is only what occurs most.

I have chosen to speak about one of my own images. I chose this painting as it was the first piece of artwork that came to mind. My image is A1 in size and emits an unusual, eerie atmosphere due to the dark background and blue and white smudged paint on the edges as well as the multi-colour sphere floating off centre of the image. I believe if this image was much larger the viewer would really be able to get fully immersed in this abstract landscape I have created and really get to strongly feel the unusual atmosphere of this image. So perhaps for further experimentation I could create a much larger piece with the similar format and concept of this particular image to see if it does indeed change the mood of the artwork. So in order to transform this image on a larger-scale I would simply just draw out the sphere in pencil like I did for the original piece and make sure to abide by the same make-up of the original; keeping the sphere off centre and the white and blue smudges in the left and right edges. Of course it would appear slightly different as it is near impossible to create an exact copy of an image, however this may prove to be beneficial.

This is a large piece of work I created based on the human form, I made it out of string, and charcoal.
I firstly drew the piece with charcoal over ten times on separate pieces of A1 paper, all with different layers and pressures.
And on a separate piece of paper I drew the outline using the yarn and then used sellotape to stick it down in the position I wanted it in. I then cut out a section in the middle of the piece and placed one of the pieces I created with charcoal underneath it and looked at what section looked best.
Then I decided it needed another charcoal section in it, so I cut a piece out and placed it in the bottom section of the yarn. I like how this collage mixed media piece turned out and it was one of the larger pieces I have created so far. The charcoal sections and especially the one at the bottom, shows the human form as it highlights the curve on the upper leg.

If I created this on a smaller scale it would be a lot harder to do as I’d have to find thinner yarn and find another way to hold it down that still would keep feel and 3D aspect to it, as sellotape would cover too much of the yarn and hide the detail. If this didn’t work I could look into pen to simplify it to still give it this bold look but not have the issue of not bing able to control the yarn at such a small scale snd keep it in place successfully.
I would also have a different effect of the charcoal as the lines would have to be thinner and not have as much detail on them, therefore taking away the tonal effect, which I liked in the larger scale.
Overall I believe this is achievable but I’d have to experiment into what would work best to recreate what I have already created and how to get the result I want on a smaller scale.

My blog has allowed me to explore my interests, existing knowledge, and future pathways within my creative practice. It has encouraged me to be more expressive, and to document both my thoughts and findings within the process. I found that my blog entries are relative to the subjects of my interest, and highlight the common themes within artists, and theories I am inspired by.

I’ve explored a lot of new ideas I normally wouldn’t have tried without this blog, it has allowed me to be more creative and experimental. Especially with the task of appropriating an image, I really had to think about what I wanted to change and how I’d want to change it and I took me a while to get into this because I’m normally used to doing my own work inspired by artists and their practise.
I wouldn’t have thought of using bright vibrant circles with such an old painting but the task made me explore into new idea’s. Before the blog I hadn’t thought about touching another artists work and appropriating it. This has given me new ideas that in the future I hope to explore.
I have also learnt a lot about other artists and it has allowed me to look into there works what I thought the meaning behind them was. Exploring into them I found they had deeper meanings but I opened my mind up to these and have expanded my knowledge on new topics.

1.Curious
2.Abstract
3.Bright
4.Experimental
5.Fluidity
6.Bursting
7.Conflicting
8.Colourful
9.Conceptual
10.Bold

I have used the words ‘colourful’, ‘bright’, and ‘bold’, because in most of my work I like working with a wide range of colour. I’m always happy to try and mix colours that normally would be ‘conflicting’ put them together and find a way of making them work well together. I really enjoy working and painting in an ‘abstract’ form as they could have hidden meanings and images in, that the audience wouldn’t initially see.
I thought of the word ‘bursting’ because the piece to me seems to have a lot of information in it from the simple and experimental brush strokes, almost as if it is bursting at the seems with detail.
A lot of my practise is also ‘experimental’ based trying something that I haven’t tried before to see if I like it and how I could evolve it on further. So I want to start trying out new painting mediums and techniques and ways of mixing mediums together to create new and exciting mixed media pieces that shall have a lot of conflicting colours and textures in them.

Jenny Balisle’s piece America Red, White and Blue explores the subject of legalised gun use in America, which has been a problem for many years and still is now, worryingly in todays society.
To create this piece she has used colorplan paper, 25×38 inches and shot at them with a Mossberg 500 shotgun, with the paper on a target of 7 yards away. She has used the gun to create lots of different sized marks on the paper, to catch the eye and I think this is effective more so in the white piece of paper because the other two are too dark to see the smaller details.
The use of the gun marks being all over the American flag is very effective as it is showing the damage guns can create but also highlighting how they are legalised in America. Putting it on the American flag is very effective as it is the best known symbol or image to show the piece is about America. So a large part of the audience should understand that the piece is talking about America and they’re use of guns. This also shows how easy it is to get and use a gun in the country, as a use of a gun was created in the making of this art. This piece will always be effective until if there is such a day when guns are not legal anymore in America.

Sources:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/amy-pleasant/artists-as-activists-purs_b_11783614.html
http://lawrencemigration.phillipscollection.org/immerse-yourself/your-panel61/jenny-e-balisle