Wire Pear
On June 17th I did a practicle workshop exploring themes pertinent to artist Matthew Darbyshireʼs practice and inspired by his new public artwork Hercules Meets Galatea. With museums and collections closed for many months and artists having limited opportunities to show and share artworks, this workshop was designed to consider alternative ways to collect, curate, make and present – from our own home, studio, or college environment.
These sessions were delivered through a series of conversations, creative prompts, practical activities and playful assignments. The group were to test a series of activities and upload images and responses to a shared dropbox. The outcomes will be utilized in the production of a booklet/zine of resources and activities for distribution to a wider audience.
I found items around my studio; a roll of wire, paper and string this led me to the black paper then the wooden balls and the wooden sticks. I then had to lay them out in order of their connection.
I made some fast drawings of the wire, starting out with 3 in a row,
then I did five as quick as I could – after making the drawings, I thought that they looked like wire drawings of pears from above. I then did a single wire drawing of a pear shape. The following day after the workshop I looked at the drawings again, I picked up the armatage wire and decided to turn it into a pear.
I have always loved pears and have photographed pear still lifes.
I have been asked to exhibit one of my pear images which I printed as an albumen print next year (spring 2022) as part of the exhibition ‘Squaring the Circles of Confusion: Neo-Pictorialism in the 21st century’ for the Royal Photographic Society.
My love for pears extend to me growing a couple of different varieties in my garden.
I have a page on pears in the ‘projects’ section titled ‘Pirum’
There’s Someone in my Head…
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, not because of lock-down but mainly because I’ve been really busy with my MA Fine Art which will end in September 2021. As far as my work is concerned it has changed quite dramatically over the last few months, it wasn’t an intentional decision, it just seems to be the direction in which my MA Fine Art has taken me, pushing me out of my comfort zone and stretching my imagination.
Doing my MA has also given me more options for future projects. I’ve been a photographer for over thirty years and as a photographer you get pigeon holed and are expected to shoot in a certain way because clients book you for your style. Now that I’m working on my own projects and on my own terms, I can expand and use all of the things that I’ve enjoyed using in the past. For instance, I’ve shot and directed videos for various clients, I used to enjoy painting and sculpting. I came to the realisation that I could now pull all of these practices together to form my practice as an artist to use which ever discipline that suits the project that I’m working on.
The project that I’m working on at the moment ‘There’s Someone in my Head’ is a self-portrait installation based on Carl Jung’s four main archetypes, The Self, The Shadow, Anima/Animus and Persona.
The work is made up of sculptures, video, performance, and dialogue. After a lot of experimenting with shop bought mannequins, I decided to make my own hand made sculptures / effigies that I can then project moving portraits of myself onto the effigies to bring them to life, each effigy talks about things related to which ever archetype they are, in a kind of Samuel Beckett style monologue.
Below are some photos and videos of my effigies taken for an online private viewing of a work in progress exhibition Unmasked.
Top Left: The Self ( with a real Xray of my chest for it’s body)
Bottom Left: Anima/Animus (2 heads)
Bottom Middle: Persona
I’m still in the middle of making The Shadow which I have found to be the hardest of them all to make and have been putting it off for months. I wasn’t sure if it should be a piece made with similar materials and aesthetic or whither it should be something totally different or whither it should just be part of the written theory. I decided that The Shadow should be of a similar aesthetic other wise it wouldn’t fit in with the other effigies as a whole installation. The Shadow apart from being the part of you that you don’t want to show to the world is also the control room, the store house of your creativity as well as your sex drive and passion. I have loads of new creative ideas for The Shadow and will look forward to sharing them in the near future.