Film Still

Title: Herbal Essences 

Date: October 2011

Medium: Stop Motion Video

Specification: No Sound

Duration: 3.14 minutes

I was continuing to work with the Herbal Essences advert and parodying this experience. I was focusing on the long history of women in nature, (Mother Earth, supernatural, seductive pastoral imagery) the idea that the female is connected to the earth and is a part of it but as suggested, we are not plant life. We do not consist of this natural substance, it is ridiculous to view it the female body in this way and I wanted to expose this absurdity. I felt it was a subtle approach to surrealism as opposed to the more obvious routes i have been exploring.

Having been experimenting with stop motion, I felt the slow pace/jerky movements really added to the mood of the piece, making the experience uncomfortably slow and relentless. I really love the technique of stop motion and I particularly like the symbolism of using photography to create film, this piece uses over 500 images to create a single, coherent streaming video and I think this ties in with ideas of manipulation, exaggeration and authenticity of imagery/experience.

 The model is stylistically over-posed, using a modelling technique known as ‘turtle necking’ which is considered elegant but is extremely uncomfortable for the model. I wanted to suggest a very meditative, controlled experience.  The exposing of the neck is in reference to Man Ray’s Anatomical series as well as a suggestion of vulnerability to enhance the intimacy and seclusion of the incident. The model never engages with the audience and it is about her experience.

Reference to broadcasting with the blue background, suggesting of blue/green screen – connection to how females are contextualised and mediated in spaces.

Reference to Peter Greenman’s ‘Draughtman’s Contract,’ in which he is killed by eating poetry.

Reference to ectoplasm - Ectoplasmics are (mainly female) spiritual mediums that excrete material/fabric like substances from orifices of their body, that can be transformed into limbs, faces or bodies of spirits. 

However, it almost an entirely fraudulent practise based on the power of suggestion and emotive appeal to the audience. Suggestion of artifice, falsity of the way images are constructed and mediated.

Feb 2011

Digital Collage using found imagery

1 x 0.7m

My practice concerns the mediation of images and the contextualisation of women, whether via broadcasting, media images and the use of blue/green screen or how women are presented in nature using ‘seductive’ pastoral imagery. My interpretation of this becomes a recorded and exaggerated parody or un-mediated response in the video work. In this way, I explore and critique notions rooted in cultural perceptions of the body such as: art historically, the ‘muse,’ the male gaze, the unidentified gaze, symbolism, feminism and the human condition.

Digitally manipulated photograph
1 x 0.7m
April 2012

Digital collages using found imagery

(A4)

April 2012

Manifesto Exhibition 

16th March

Grace and Clark Fyfe Building

Danielle Henderson

I am really excited about Leah Capaldi's new piece: Prop.



I think it really ties in with certain ideas that I have been looking at. Within my practise I have been trying to separate the performer with the performance - which is inherently linked, particularly the female body as discussed by Amelia Jones in 'Body Art'. I am interested in the notion that the body becomes another prop, and whether the performer is always an object/prop when it comes to performance art.

LOVE Hester Scheurwater

LOVE Hester Scheurwater

'My Daily Uploads'
September 15th, 2010
Image sourced at www.hesterscheurwater.com

why YOU should love Hester Scheurwater... 

Having been repeatedly banned from Facebook and Youtube, Scheurwater provokes notions of censorship by challenging the relationship between privacy and public realms and how these aspects are governed online. Facebook is her domain for broadcasting and this reflects wholly on her work. Navigating Facebook becomes an exploration into the power struggles in the digital domain and what is deemed appropriate in a seemingly lawless territory, as well as critiquing how users abide by social media codes. 

The use of explicit pornographic and fetishistic overtones shares a relationship with discourse revolving the hyper-sexualisation of society. Scheurwater embodies the change in social attitude towards pornography and female representation, her indulgent exhibitionist self-portraiture display fetish coding such as: bondage,[1] voyeurism,[2]seduction, temptation, leather and PVC clothing, sheer and ripped tights or stockings, high heels, in order to reveal the voyeuristic nature of the act of looking.  Scholar Louise J. Kaplan suggests that, “…the roles women are required to play in our society are in themselves a form of perversion.”[3] Scheurwater is just one example of a culture of,“Indoctrinated, obsessed and fascinated by this view of the “sensual seductive” woman as a sex object.”[4] By obsessively taking image after image of her body, Scheurwater complies to the impact of the media portraying images of the ideal woman coinciding with the constant need to observe her body and to become hyper-sexualised. This bombardment of perfection has led the artist to scrutinise her own image every day.

Using the conventions of traditional self-portraiture (by reflecting on the inner and outer self.)The use of the mirror is a significant aspect of her work; the symbolic associations of vanity, beauty, observation, visibility and reflection, performance, mimesis, serve to reinforce the act of looking and viewer as voyeur. The idea of voyeurism is conflated in these works by the acknowledgement of the artist as a spectator of her own body, “...the artist looks at herself from both sides of the mirror." Scheurwater herself becomes a viewer of her own sexualised, commoditised image and therefore is knowingly in control of this representation. The gaze within the photograph begins with the artist, empowerment here, takes the form of being in control of the construction and creation of her image.

As Scheurwater points out, "There is no erotic fake layer between me and my photos, I do not mirror sex for better and more romantic than it is."[5]  The haptic sensations evoked with the reading of her work lends the viewer to sympathise and realise the poignant impact of pornography on female representation and identity. 

---

[1] Partially obscuring her body with tights and the use of tight, restrictive clothing emulates that of bondage ties.

[2] Despite Scheurwater’s staged photography, one gets a sense of observing a private moment in the artist’s bedroom, emphasised with the use of perspective and camera angles

[3] Female Perversions, Louise J Kaplan, p 45

[4]Hester Scheurwater, Artist Statement, www.hesterscheurwater.com 

[5]Hester Scheurwater, Jan 20^th 2011, Interview Hester Dutch newspaper Volkskrant Magazine Scheurwater, Wim de Jong, translated from Dutch

LOVE: Shaun O'Donnell

LOVE: Shaun O'Donnell

My personal favourite from the GSA Degree Show 2010 was of course the wonderous paintings of Shaun O'Donnell, I managed to snag a postcard from his exhibition last year:

He didn't disappoint in his latest exhibiton:

Reversed echoes in the new, new world.

Shaun O’Donnell

141 Gallery / SWG3

100 Eastvale Place, Glasgow, G3 8QG

 

why YOU should love Shaun O'Donnell

 

Gone are the geometric patterns and the horizon of endless squares in eternity. In place are now new realms taking on a carnival spirit envolping a self- perpetuating  fantasy scene - taking the viewer on an Escher-esque journey of the human psyche. Again, the organic (and definitly more obviously phallic) shapes, impasto brushstrokes and bold use of colour feature heavily in his work - highlighting carnal insights and creating fleshy characters to ponder over in their strange land.

 

His paintings and sculpture are just a spectacle to be indulged in, they are so dynamic and enticing, it's easy to get lost circling the vast and heavily constructed worlds of colour. Searching the depths, you can't help but be unnerved by the unnatural coporeal elements, underlining a more sinister, darker mood to the work. 

New Year's Resolution:

• Write more lists Have more goals.