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Set of Screenprints

A3

The Card for Cat Lovers

A little 'Get Well' card I made for a friend. 

Life Drawing Studies

A few life drawing studies using ink, pencil and charcoal.

Book

Hand-bound book I created using stills from a short film I created recently.

Found imagery and paint

A4

Jan 2012

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

Film Stills from recent stop-motion film ( Herbal Essences, 4mins, Nov 2011)

&

Studio shot (Nov 2011)

Collages from found imagery

(October 2011)