Wednesday, 27 January 2010

SOCIAL CONTEXT

so, we got given module 3: SOCIAL CONTEXT. obviously in direct comparison to the previous module, IDENTITY, it was meant to give us the opposite experience.. identity: inside/ourselves/what we feel, social context: outside, everyone else, what everyone feels. i brainstormed social problems and came up with the idea that everything i was interested in could be covered by my broad topic of "SEPARATION AND SEGREGATION" i printed out several images which can be seen in my sketchbook and made a series of drawings over the following days attempting to encompass my topic.
i did these drawings in my sketchbook and larger scale (above) and got a very good responce from people in the studio. i realised they were similar to CAVE PAINTINGS and researched them and felt that these paintings were intrinsically the same in any cave anywhere in the world and saw the parallel between that and my topic.. anywhere in the world segregation and separation is an issue... we had to produce a VISUAL MANIFESTO. i took VISUAL to mean just that, no words, express with images or anything other than words. so for my manifesto i got several small pieces of paper and attempted to draw as many examples of segregation and separation that i could think of and displayed them togetheras such:
then the module got brutally intersected by christmas. we had a christmas project on the Art Review Power 100 that i felt was difficult to link to my work and generally threw the whole BA first years off course. i made a chistmas card in the form of a cigarette packet from Damien Hirst to Jay Jopling in a humerous comment on Hirst's current exhibitions that were slated to the press. I think it works very well and got a very positive responce from tutors.
after christmas i obviously felt a little separated(no link/pun intended) from my project. So i felt to get myself working again in a contructive and intriguing way i decided to go into 3D.. something i hadnt really done before on my own. I decided to take my little cave painting style primitive drawings into 3d maquettes to see where that might take me.
by this time, we were warned of limited time left for the project to be finished and i found myself become unusually orgainised and productive, getting to work straight away on large bigger-than-life-sized versions of these people i had been drawings before christmas. made 'primitively' from chicken-wire and painted newspaper i felt that they were ridiculously simple but also very effective. they looked very GIACOMETTI-ish but with some sort of emotion. i decided to make a standing one, in the pose that i had drawn in several pictures.. a pose i call "the judge" a sarcastic judging figure.. but i couldnt for the life of me make him stand alone. i spent more than a day in the plaster room trying to get him erected using wire, wood, plaster and even masking tape but to no avail.
i think i hind-sight i could have easily thought it through beforehand and put strong metal supports in place, rather than my initial wood ones and plastered that to the base, but in the end i had to give up and hung him from a roof vent above my space. i was meant to take him out into the public arena and place him and take photographs to see how he responded with space, but in my frustration with getting him to stand i forgot and he was already hung in place so i abandonded that idea.
finished position:
i felt that the two people could communicate with the viewer and took inspiration from TONY OURSLER to give them a voice. i wanted to make my standing one a judge.. a very opinionated person, and my sitting one very lonely and almost bullied.. but i was obviously trying to avoid a cliche. I recorded 100% improvised dialogue and edited it to make it more booming and creepy (as a lot of people told me they looked without the voice, so that was the influence there) and bought mini-speakers to go inside.. but they were not loud enough in a studio environment. i think they would have worked in a gallery space.. but really i needed better, more powerful speakers to really get the effect i desired.

No comments:

Post a Comment