Unit X Reflection

 

During my completion of Unit X I have learnt a few things that have made me flourish as an artist. I have learnt how to work collaboratively to put on an exhibition. I have also discovered a taste for using performance art as a medium to portray my ideas. I feel that I can now take these skills on into my practices in the future to become a successful artist.

Unit X has had many aspects to take on, and I feel that I have varied in engagement with each of these tasks, yet succeeded in them all. I threw myself into my primary research by promptly choosing the theme of 'Appropriation' and finding out the definition of this word, and artists to which it may refer. I also visited a lot of galleries such as the Manchester Art Gallery and the newly opened Whitworth Gallery, to small 2nd year openings. I engaged in a performance workshop with the artist Angela Bartram, which encouraged me a lot to go for the medium of performance for this project. I also fully engaged myself in working with a group of people who all chose 'Appropriation' as their subject to work towards for Unit X. I created a Facebook group for us all to communicate with ease upon and regularly posted about the meetings we held and what we discussed during. I do however think that if I'd of had more time with my group we could have come up with more creative pieces together.

I have taken a few choices during Unit X that have informed my idea development. In the beginning I conducted deep research into past biblical imagery and existing performance art that I felt I could take ideas from and link to the theme of 'Appropriation'. From this I learnt about the 'Fallen Woman' and chose to experiment with my response to this by using performance and my original practice of film and photography.

As I have mentioned, I have learnt some skills for performance art during Unit X, but if I could improve my final piece, I'd have practiced it a lot more before performing it to an audience. From watching back the recording I had my friend make I saw a lot of flaws that I could sort out and repair in the future.

There have been some key motives during Unit X that have drove me to engage fully and press on successfully. The performance workshop I did gave me confidence to actually go through with performing my piece to an audience. Working with others with the aim of putting on an interesting show was also a motivating exercise as we all had one goal. From this I now would love to take the opportunity of working collaboratively in the future with other artists.

Unit X has had it's ups and downs, but I feel that I have gained skills as an artist that I will take on into the future and have fun with.

I revisited the Unit X exhibition at Federation House with my relatives today to show my piece. As I approached the remnants of my 'Fallen Woman' performance piece I found that a really interesting thing had occurred over the past day or so.

The red food colouring had started to bleed more colours onto the shirts and left bruise like marks that looked really intriguing. People had also started to interact and take their own view of the piece into by consideration by throwing coins into the bucket as if it were a well.

Lines of Enquiry for Unit X

 

Unit X has been a collaborative project that has extended the aims that I have had to carry out. Some aspects of collaboration have been meeting up with a group of artists from different courses to all create an exhibition towards a chosen theme. I have chosen the theme of 'Appropriation' throughout this project and in the beginning created a Facebook group for I and the people I worked with to discuss ideas and post about group meetings we attended in. The collaborative work and development has been affected by attendance to the meetings. The same people would show up week after week, but after a while we pulled the fragments of each meeting together and created a publication together. It started off as an idea we could work together on, and when it was finally produced , it felt relieving that we made a collaborative piece that combined all of our takes upon 'Appropriation'.

Throughout Unit X there were key developments within our group that I noticed. As we all got to know each other a bit better, we grew more confident in organising meetings. The key meeting I remember was when we went around each individuals studio to see he work they had produced for Unit X and held our own group crit without the guidance of a tutor.

I developed myself as an artist from these group crits as the perspective of another on the pieces I was making, and the ideas I had, pushed me on to re-work the pieces so that they worked better from suggestion of others.

I also was inspired to want to collaborate in the future with other artists on my course. I found that talking to a group of people I don't know very well helped my confidence and I even helped out a 3rd year with her piece. Unit X has allowed me to meet new people, which leads to new links and opportunities.

The creative responses I took to this project have all been under the context of 'Appropriation'. I looked at performance artists that I felt linked back to this idea, and engaged myself in a workshop with a performance artist to develop my own skills within this medium. It was I who came up with the idea for a collaborative publication with the group of people I have worked with for this project which turned out successful. I did use my original practice of work of film and photography to experiment with appropriation of the body with my 'Statue of David' video.

If I had more time with this project I would have organised time better, as I felt that the setup of the exhibition could've taken lesser time if we had better attendance and a readymade layout of the exhibition. I personally could have experimented with different mediums in which to display my work. I'd of liked to show my 'Statue of David' video as a projection, but due to lack of equipment, I was unable.

Overall I hope that after the exhibition I can continue to use the skills of collaboration I have created during Unit X to make work with others. 

Opening Night

 

So we made it as a group to the opening night of our exhibition successfully. It didn't end there for me however as I proposed to do a performance piece spontaneously.

My piece started off as a sculptural piece that I observed people walking around questioning what it was.

 

 

As more and more people arrived to the exhibition, I thought that organising a crowd for my piece would be necessary, so I wrote around the bucket that there would be a performance at 7pm. As time grew closer I headed to get ready for my piece. At a few minutes past 7pm, I wandered through the galleries and arrived to a crowd around my bucket. Dressed in my red dress I performed my piece.

 

 

 

My friend filmed the piece for me to display and look at. I am very happy with the response to my piece. I found the experience made me more positive to carry on with performance as a medium in my work.

As I wandered through the crowd to my piece I kept the same frame of mind, I focused on the bucket and shirts and began to dip the shirts into the bucket of water. I did however struggle to find the blood capsules I had made to pierce, but as I broke the first and released the food colouring on my hand there was a gasp from the audience as I held my 'blood' stained hand up . I continued to erratically slosh water about and cover the shirts. As the performance came to a close I became aware of the audience and wiped my blood stained hands down my face to imitate the tears of blood the Virgin Mary was alleged to of cried and stood up. I gathered the shirts together and kicked them into the crowd which provoked yet more gasps and walked out.

Overall I am aware the piece had its flaws, but it received a fair applause and I hope the underlying messages stay with people.

 

A few people managed to capture my performance and kindly shared their photos with me:

 

Katie Jane Hamill

 

 

Amalie Wilhelmsen

 

 

I also am particularly proud of the remnants of my piece as the blood stained shirts fit in well with the colour scheme of our exhibition, and the water splashes from tonight will slowly dry up.

 

 

Unit X has been a challenge but in the end proved rewarding for me as an artist. I will carry on the themes I have used within this project on into my future work.

 



The exhibition setup started to develop even more today as we began to hang our own work.
My film still pieces began by a window, but as more work was put up we made a decision to take all the work down as it was starting to look like a jumble sale.

 

We laid out all the pieces on the ground and tried to come up with a general theme running throughout the pieces. The colours Red, Black and White were repetitious within the work.

 

 

We placed out the sculptural work first, then the larger paintings, and then tried to fit the rest around. Smaller pieces in fact needed more wall space than the large, and we varied the placement height of each piece, by leaning some paintings on the floor.

 

 

I had a bit of a disaster with my film stills piece. I had placed each photo in a glass frame and as I was hanging them from the roof, one slipped and smashed. I decided to display the pieces without frames and in a different layout to the original way I had hung them. I used bulldog clips to link each piece and the ending result actually looked a lot more effective than in the beginning.

 

 

I laid out my bucket and shirts for my performance so that it looked like a sculptural piece you could walk around and view

 

 

 

 In the end we devised our space well I feel and after the finishing touches where applied, it felt rewarding. All our weeks of work had come together well in time for opening night tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research for Unit X

My research for Unit X has been somewhat ongoing. I have engaged myself in online research, but also physical research and development. So far I have:

• Been inspired by existing performances by artist's and how I could link them to the theme of appropriation. Furthermore this has lead me to be inspired by biblical imagery and the definition of 'The Fallen Woman'
• I have been to a few exhibitions at different galleries and picked out key pieces I have noticed that I feel link to appropriation, and then written about them.
• After thinking about mediums in which I could translate my work the best in, I discovered that performance could be the better way. I'd considered this briefly earlier on in the development of my work, but took the idea on fully after attending a workshop with the performance artist Angela Bartram
• I have also tried to engage myself with other students during Unit X. I have the collaborative aspect of working with other students to put on an exhibition, but I have also helped out a 3rd year with her work, and attended a few 2nd year exhibitions, which has inspired me with brief ideas that I could explore further. It has also made me aware of what tasks I need to carry out in order to work together with my group to put on a successful exhibition.

Several aspects of my research have influenced my ideas and their development. Earlier on in my blog posts I talked about how I took a camera around with me in the early stages of Unit X to photograph anything that might inspire. I also had a brief idea to look into biblical and classical imagery, this now being a main focus in my work.
This is the blog post in which I wrote about these initial ideas: http://ellenmoss.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/last-week-i-tore-down-all-past-work-in.html

I began by looking into the definition of 'The Fallen Woman' and how it links to figures of the past such as Mary Magdalene. I also had a look into how I could take the idea and apply it to modern day, by referring it to 'slut shaming'.

 

From looking into these ideas I discovered the Magdalene Laundries' of the past and this has been a strong influence of my work. I have since then come up with a performance piece inspired by this, that involves me washing clothes like the women put in these institutions where made to, but I slowly stain them with blood. This piece is very symbolic and reflects all aspects of my earlier research as I have chosen to wear red whilst doing this as it represents 'sexuality, lust and sin', and also is the colour Mary Magdalene was seen to commonly wear.

My piece has also strongly reflected my research into performance art, one particular piece it reflects is Marina Abramovic's 'Balkan Baroque' where the artist sits and scrubs cow bones for hours on end and gets slowly more emotional as she tells stories of her homeland.

 



 

Another strong piece that stood out to me was when I saw Riike Enna's 'Future of Venus' at The Manchester Art Gallery. I had never seen a live piece of performance art before and it stuck with me and urged me to create my own piece.
I feel that I have done well with research during Unit X, you can see how each piece I have written about in my blog has influenced me and I have taken time to visit places to extend my research. I have also researched into a new medium that I can express my ideas with, and I feel like I can carry on with performance art after Unit X.

Our exhibition came together today as we all met to setup the cardboard partitions we had been given to shape and display our exhibition.
We had been given large sheets of cardboard and hooks to work with so it was difficult to find a way to put the exhibition up without it looking shabby. We chose to suspend the card from the ceiling and have them hanging down.

 

We also put together card to make cubed plinths to place some of the more sculptural pieces on

 

 

After hanging all the foundations for our work up we marked where we may put our work tomorrow and put tape to scale up the size of our pieces. Tomorrow we will hang the work, and perhaps adjust where everything may go.

 

 

 

We finally made our publication today, in time for display at the exhibition. We selected the people in our group who had been inducted to book bind to create the piece. In the end we came up with the title 'Pre-existing' as the title of our publication.

I'm happy that we all managed to put together a collaborative piece for the exhibition. I do however wish we had more time to create duplicates of this piece to distribute at the exhibition as I feel that it is such a simple piece.
Another task we have completed as a group today is the labels we will be putting next to our pieces in the exhibition. We all messaged Ed from our group the title of our work, the medium and our names. Mine will read:

'Fallen Woman'
Performance
Ellen Moss

'Untitled'
Film Stills
Ellen Moss

In addition to the title of my pieces, today I had stills from my 'Statue of David' video printed so that I can display them at our exhibition. I decided to not give the piece the name I refer to it as in the exhibition as I am not completely happy with a title yet.

I chose to print in A4 due to costs, but I feel that if I was to display the piece in the future I'd use A1 for each still as it would give a life like feel to the pieces.
It was the first time I have properly printed my artwork out onto professional glossy paper so it felt rewarding, and I can't wait to display them and perhaps get more of my work printed properly in the future.

Free-For-All

 

As mentioned I have been writing about the 2nd year exhibitions I have been visiting as I feel that it ties in with Unit X as it gives me an insight of what it's like to collaboratively set up an exhibition. Free-For-All was outstanding to me as it was set up in a rather unconventional setting at Rogue studios in Manchester. The artists had used their small setting well, none of the art clashed. Everyone was well greeted with drinks and food, and even encouraged to take part in a ballot to choose who should be the head artist.

 

 

 

The main focus of the night was a blank canvas and an orange pot of paint. The first person dared to pick up the paintbrush and hell broke loose from then on.

 

 

People carefully painted whimsical objects onto the canvas, but as the night progressed (And alcohol was consumed) the painting became more anarchic. I provided my own response by erratically charging at the canvas and swiped my body across it, which provided a humorous response. People began to use the walls as the canvas and eventually an onlooker slashed the original canvas with a knife.

 

 

 

The piece had energy and to me reflected the human nature of Marina Abramovic's Rhythm 0 where people would start off scared to make a dint upon Abramovic, but eventually became more aggressive.

Overall the exhibiton proved fun and successful, and I came out with a positive attitude for my own in a few days.

Today we booked out a room in the art school known as G01 to practice the setup of our exhibition as a compulsory part of Unit X. As a group however we all agreed that although half of G01 is the size of space we will be given at Federation House to set up our exhibition, it is not completely the same so it would be pointless to set up a mock exhibition today as it wont really give us an idea as a whole. Instead we laid out the work we had brought with us to get an idea of what peoples work is or is based around.

We also laid out our entry images for our collaborative publication. If people had not brought work, we suggested measuring out the average size of work. Considering the amount of work we had, I asked if I could include some stills from my 'Statue of David' video. It was a spare of the moment idea I had as I'd quite like that piece to be featured as I feel that it would be a shame to be shown as it had strong connections to appropriation.
Our tutor came along to our meeting and suggested alternative ideas of showing our exhibition that would mean it wasn't your average show. We sat and discussed these ideas, some suggested we set up the exhibition, take a photo, then just display the photo. Others suggested we laid all of the pieces upon the floor for the audience to walk around

 

Although these were innovative ideas, we all felt that considering the time we have left before the exhibition, we wont have enough time to organise and practice these suggested ideas. Towards the end of this meeting we came up with a list of things we needed to do before the exhibition. On Monday the 11th we will meet and produce the publication and labels to display next to our work.

 

Later on today I visited yet more 2nd year exhibitions.

 

The Road Not Taken

 

This exhibition was very useful to attend as it was at Federation House, the space we will be using next week. Federation House is an old office space so the ceilings were low, there were many pillars and the floor had been ripped up to reveal wooden flooring.

 

 

The girls who produced this exhibition had spread their work out, and used the space well in my opinion. The work was based upon a poem by Robert Frost, which suggests ideas of process, journey, doubt and memory.

After visiting the exhibition I began to panic as I realised we would not receive as much space as the artists here had been given, as there are 6 groups in our Unit X project to fit into half of the room. I notified my group via our Facebook page and we agreed that we would meet up everyday before opening night next week.

As I have to take down my studio work later on this week, I thought I'd include some photos of my current space as I feel that it reflects the work I have been producing, and the images that have inspired me during Unit X

 

I have been experimenting with what I will be using during my performance piece as blood to stain some shirts. Fake blood left a pink stain, whereas red food colouring left a more realistic effect. I experimented this idea on cotton that replicates the fabric used to make the average shirt.

 

 

 

I have collected a few things for my piece such as a large bucket, dozens of white men's shirts and a red floor length sheer dress to wear. My performance will be spontaneous, I have no need to announce it on a flyer I feel. I will randomly walk in during our exhibition night to my bucket and shirts set up on the floor and start washing the shirts. I have come up with a way of hiding capsules of food colouring within the shirts after coming up with various methods. I have filled numerous water balloons with food colouring and will pierce them with a pin so that they spurt all over the shirts and myself. I hope this provides the audience with a shock factor. Slowly the shirts will get more and more drenched in 'blood' and I will get more and more vigorous and agitated with the fact I am not making these shirts any cleaner. I will eventually stand up and collect the shirts together, then kick them into the audience to defiantly clear my way out of the performance, breaking the fourth wall. The remnants of the performance will lie as a sculptural piece for the rest of the exhibition.

The title of this piece is 'The Fallen Woman' and links back to my earlier research into the Magdalene Laundries' and views of promiscuous women. The blood symbolises how my actions 'stain' the men I have come across and I can't wash this away.

Today a few of us met up with our tutor David to discuss with him what we had come up with so far as a group. We met the member of our group who was from the Art History course for the first time and she told us that she had been working on a poster to advertise our exhibition.

We discussed our ideas for the publication and set a deadline for everyone to upload their submissions as not many had been loaded as of yet.

Viewpoint

Later on that day I decided to visit the first of many 2nd year exhibitions opening this week around Manchester. This one was called Viewpoint.

 

All of the art was linked to geometry and shape. Mainly paintings, I liked the actual setting of the exhibition. I felt that they had used a small space well, and work was not just hung on a wall, but placed on the floor. It gave me an insight of how we could use our space given for Unit X.

Today I helped with a 3rd year called Natalie Wardle to create a video for her end of year show. She required as many girls as possible to wear nude underwear, particularly control style pieces. 11 girls turned up and we stood in front of the camera and pulled at what we were wearing for approximately a minute. The theme Natalie had in mind was about how women's underwear is restricting and doesn't show the female anatomy in its true form.

We stood in a line to begin with, then walked about pinging our own underwear, to then pinging each others

 

 

I found that working on this piece has developed my confidence to work collaboratively. Unit X is helping me by showing me an insight on what it is like to work with others, and I feel that so far I have taken a headstrong position within my group and that it is benefiting me in the long run.

I also felt very inspired by Natalie's use of underwear and pulling it away, so I have come up with a new, quick idea I can experiment with before our exhibition goes ahead. I want to get some fishnet tights and film myself ripping them off. Fishnets are often worn by 'hookers' and seen as a 'slutty' item to be seen it, so this links greatly to my ideas to do with the 'fallen woman'.

 

As promised to my group, I uploaded my submission for the collaborative piece we are making. I posted it on our Facebook page to remind and encourage everyone else to start doing so too.

I chose to use one of the images I took in the first week of me tearing down my space, and also a more recent picture of the space I work in, as I feel that it reflects all of the ideas I've had so far. My statement read:

"Past Ideology of the 'Fallen Woman' is something I am focusing upon in my current series of works. I am using pre-existing imagery to reflect upon, and trying to apply it to the modern day. I am creating a performance that has a ubiquitous theme of appropriation running throughout"

 

 

I had the pleasure to attend a performance workshop with the artist Angela Bartram today after receiving an email from one of my tutors about 15 spaces available for it. I eagerly took this opportunity, partly as my work for Unit X is taking a form in the medium of performance, but also as in my first term on Fine Art we received an artist lecture from Bartram that stood out to me, and everyone that attended. In that lecture Bartram showed us a piece in which she licked a dog for the entire duration of the video. This shocked the audience and I thought it was powerful as it stuck in my mind. I found Bartram's work ballsy and witty, she opened my eyes up to elements of performance art I had not yet thought about.

For this workshop we were told to bring 4 items. A piece of food that we find delicious and a piece of food we find distasteful. Also an item that has sentimental value to us, and another that has no meaning at all. I chose to bring chilli crisps, malt loaf, a teddy I have had since I was 5 and a half burnt candle.

As the morning began we sat and discussed performance, and got Bartram's perspective of it. In her own words 'everything you do is a performative action'. Everything that a person does from the minute they wake up is an action, from sitting up, to brushing your teeth, to travelling.
There is a difference between 'performance' and 'live art' as I found out. Performance is something that the audience can expect to get, yet live art is random and often done without the audience being aware that it was going to happen.

There are many types of performance art, one being One to One. This is where you perform to one person, and your piece is often memorable as it challenges awkwardness and how far a person is willing to react.
For our first task we were told to eat a bit of each of the foods we had brought and write down in great detail of how we were reacting to these things. Then we had to find a partner and reinact and describe how the food tasted. The girl I was partnered with found that when I ate and described the malt loaf, the food that I despise, she found herself cringing at it, even though she likes the food herself, so I feel like I did a good job.
We then had to work on a short piece with our partner that we could perform to the rest of the group. We used two sofas for our and put the foods we liked on one side and the food we dislike on the other. We'd take turns in swapping sofas, but if you went to the sofa you liked you lay on your back to eat the food as that's a pleasurable, comfortable way to consume food. If you went to the side you dislike you had to lie on your front as it was an uncomfortable way to lie as you are pressing on your stomach.
After performing this piece we were told to create individual speed performances with the item we had sentimental value. I chose to tell the story of how I got my bear at a young age, but in a creepy way as if the bear was like a boyfriend to me. I wanted to also reflect the fact that if you do the things you did as a child now it seems creepy and sinister as an adult. I performed the piece one to one with each member of the group and aimed to make them uncomfortable, but ended up apologising and reassuring them that I wasn't really like that. I think I fell down in that performance because as soon as I made eye contact with the person watching I started to panic.

I think this workshop inspired me a lot to carry on with performance art. I saw some strengths come out within myself, but also saw when things weren't working which I think was vital. I am now a lot more positive about my performance piece I am working on for Unit X, and hope that this workshop has boosted my confidence.

After a good turn out, my group met up today as proposed in our last meeting and had a look around each individuals studio. We did this to get an idea of each others thoughts on appropriation and the work they had been making for our exhibition. It also gave us a sense of scale of each piece so that we can figure out how to curate our exhibition to fit the size we may be given. It was interesting to see how each member of the group had interpreted 'appropriation'.
Before this we had a brief look at some of the images and statements people had written about appropriation, as only a few had managed to do this. We came to the agreement that writing what we all thought appropriation to be clashes and we were pretty much giving the same definition. We have now agreed to re-write about how appropriation links to the work we are making now, and we will post this with the images we have selected, on the Facebook group.

As we looked around the studios at each others work there was a vast range of collage ideas, to paintings, to sculpture.

Emily Straw

Emily had used images from fashion magazines that had caught her eye for not looking like clothes, but for their likeness to something else. She would then cut that particular segment of paper out and arrange it in another perspective

Ellie Algieri

We had been told Ellie was rather lost in her project so searched for simple words to spark her off. She collaged words to begin with, but then like Emily, resorted to fashion magazines. Here she cut out segments of models faces and arranged them back to where they were positioned in the first place, but noticeably with pieces missing, and layering features from different models up to create one face

Kiran Sandhu

Kiran's work links to appropriation in the fact that she is manipulating old images that she took in the first term of her course. She has chosen to stitch and embroider into these portraiture photographs to highlight certain areas, and also distract from the black and white images with brightly coloured threads

Ed Florance

Money is Ed's chosen theme, as he discussed with us in the previous meeting. He chose this theme as 'we all could trade another way, but we choose to use money'. In his last project he produced a working sculpture of a printer that imitated printing an endless roll of money. This brings the idea of appropriation in as he is essentially duplicating something that has already been made. The work Ed showed us during the group crit was a large, accurate painting of a £10 note. Ed explained to us that the paint he used changes under UV light. I personally think his work reflects appropriation strongly, especially with the idea that if you mass produce something it looses its value, so this questions the role of money

Michael Koropisz

Michael has been working on pieces that reflect old classical paintings. He initially started copying well known paintings such as 'The Girl With the Pearl Earring' to get a hang of what techniques these past painters had used to create their pieces. He has then painted members of his own family in this style, making them look grand and eerily like monarchs

Nathan Lee

Collage is Nathan's chosen medium, he has been quite experimental by re-arranging images from fashion magazines, with images from National Geographic. This clash provides us with an image that you take a double look at, as the two images are very different, but work together well. I personally felt that the images show the differences from Western and Eastern culture.

At the end of the crit, we all agreed to keep the facebook group more active with ongoing progress within work and ideas to help each other out. We also agreed to all have posted our submission for our collaborative piece before our next meeting.

Today I met up with my Unit X group as we have had a 3 week break for Easter that has given us time to develop our ideas. I notified the group via a brief Facebook post a few days before this meeting to remind them.

After a good turn out, we sat and talked about what ideas we had come up with and how we could link it to appropriation. We went round the circle and got an idea of where each member of the group was coming from. A vital thing discussed is how we would hang or display our work, so that we could think of a way to utilise the space we will be given at Federation house. There are a lot of painters within our group, so we discussed ways of displaying these pieces without using a wall. As we do not have an assigned curator, it is crucial that we practice the layout of our exhibition before the main event.
After looking at each others brief notes and sketches, there was a few ideas floating about that stood out to me, these being:

• Iconic imagery
• Taking images/ideas out of perspective
• Manipulating images
• Consumerism
• Re-working old ideas to create a new outlook
• Influences

Other things we discussed were how we could make a collaborative, simple piece together as a group within the short few weeks we had. I suggested a panflet/zine that has collective images and passages from each of us. The images being of our work or work that has inspired us. This idea went down well with the group and we talked about making it a rather amateur looking piece that we could duplicate and distribute with ease. We thought another good idea would be to make the publication into a piece that reflects the amount of adverts contained in modern magazines, by putting a lot of images of modern art in-between our own passages. This would reflect the 'distraction' element of advertisement's used in these magazines.
After closing the meeting, we agreed to meet Friday the 24th and bring our images and passages for the panflet/zine then.

I've had another idea that experiment's with appropriation and taking an image that's not yours and displaying it as your own. I printed off an A4 image of the statue of David's genitalia and held it against my own to see how this would look and the effect was quite strong.

 

Although the image needed shifting around a bit to match exactly where my body began, I began to think about the themes I could portray by experimenting with this piece. The image I was holding was quite clearly of a males body, but as I am female the juxtaposition of me and the image worked well. You can tell that I am female by many tell-tale signs such as the shadow of my breast, the curves of my hips, but slap bang over the top of this is a common photo we all recognise of a males presence. I also liked the suggestive qualities this picture provided as I chose to use my duvet as a backdrop and it is quite a personal way to portray my body. This is when I started to experiment with the medium of displaying this piece. I took a video of me scrunching up the image close to my body.

 

 

I liked the way it gave a rather feminist stance to the piece as I felt it linked to the performance art piece I saw a few weeks ago by Riike Enna at the Manchester Art Gallery, where she broke out of a shell of modroc which made her look like a statue from the past and ripped all the clay off defiantly. The setting she did this in was one of the powerful elements of the piece as she was surrounded by paintings and sculptures by men of the past that forced women into a certain form. I feel like I have shadowed this as I am basically 'crushing' the ideal male form, particularly as I have chosen to use an image from a statue that stands so heroically and is an image that refers to masculinity a lot.

 

 

I'd like to develop this idea further and perhaps use images from other statues or classical art paintings. I could also maybe create a performance piece from this idea aswell.

 

After three weeks away from university, I took the time to explore Manchester in research for Unit X. I made use of the two main galleries, The Manchester Art Gallery and the newly refurbished Whitworth Gallery. I also visited the Trial/Error exhibition at our Holden Gallery in university.

The Whitworth Art Gallery

The Whitworth proved fruitful in its many links to appropriation, it's main exhibition being the work of Cornelia Parker. From looking at her work I see that she has taken elements from old famous paintings, such as canvas linings and margins, and displayed them as her own work.

As I walked into a lighter gallery, I was confronted with crushed musical instruments and cutlery suspended from the ceiling, floating just inches from the floor.

 

Parker had taken pre-existing items, manipulated them and displayed them as her own. I went into a smaller gallery and was confronted with Parker's widely renowned shed. Here she had taken an object we all identify with, containing items we are all likely to own, taken it to a company that specialises in explosives, and blown it up. She then collected the pieces and reassembled the piece in an almost time frame of the moment the shed shot apart.

This piece must've taken a long time to produce, but the effect is very impressive.The use of found objects in appropriation art is very prominent as I moved onto the Sarah Lucas pieces in the gallery.

Here she has used these inanimate, everyday objects we use, to create weird and almost human like sculptures and self portraits.

I liked the spontaneity of these pieces, this is something I'd like to do within my work.

 

Trial/Error Art - The Holden Gallery

As I moved onto my own university's art gallery, I discovered after passing through many times that the current Trial/Error exhibition has many works contained that apply to Appropriation.

 

 

The exhibition focuses on art that is made with the prospect of failure. I found that the particular artist that stood out in relation to appropriation was John Stezaker. Several of his collage pieces where displayed, that used clippings from magazines, juxtaposed to create a particular scene

 

 

I liked the way that these images were not Stezaker's own, but he manipulated them in order to make you look twice at the image. The hand of the middle lady in the above piece isn't actually part of her picture, but the way you see it at first glance makes you believe that the pasted above photo is part of the foundation photograph. A simple way of portraying appropriation, but I feel that Stezaker makes a strong impact.

 

Manchester Art Gallery - Emily Allchurch In the Footsteps of a Master

I once again made a trip to the Manchester Art Gallery as I had heard that there was a small new exhibition set up of the work of Emily Allchurch. She had taken the work of French Impressionist Adolphe Valette and his 1910 painting of Albert Square, Manchseter and taken it into a more modern narrative painting of her own.

 

 

The pieces Allcurch created were displayed as lightboxes and were amazingly accurate to their original paintings, yet with eerie updated differences. As I walked into Allchurche's celebrated 'Tokyo Story', the curation of this exhibition stood out to me.

 

 

The exhibition was dimmed, with Allchurche's lightboxes illuminated. In front lay the original pieces by 19th century Japanese printmaker Utagawa Hiroshige, that Allchurch had based the pieces upon. I found out that these pieces were a complex digital collage using hundreds of photographs stitched together.

 

Attending these galleries has given me some inspiration, and I hope to meet up with my collaborative group in a few days to discuss these ideas.