In order to raise funds for our art school, the university hosted an art auction of all our current student's donated work. I attended as I had a friend who had put one of his sculptures into the auction.

 

Some of the people from my collaborative Unit X group where there, so I took the opportunity to have a brief meeting with them as we have little time to waste. I got to see inside the Art History studios and what the other students had begun to work on. We organised some dates to share with the rest of the group on Facebook to have group crits of each other's work so that we could get an idea of where everyone is going with there work. It will take place after the Easter break, but we will continue to post images of our work on that page. We talked about coming up with a manifesto of our work that we can display at the exhibition on the 18th of May. Some of the ideas included making a small zine of our work with a statement on how it relates to appropriation, and also a piece that is a 'daisy chain' that we pass around and add our own flare and style to. This actually inspired me with an idea of plaiting hair of others with mine as a collaborative piece, which I will work on over the Easter break.

Today I met the group I will be collaborating with for Unit X. There is a range of Fine Art and Art History students, so it is exciting to be working with people from other courses as we can all bring something innovative to the table. A few days ago I created a Facebook page in order for us to all interact with ease, and discuss ideas and days to meet up.

 

This morning we met up at the Holden Gallery with our tutor David Osbaldeston to discuss what we all think appropriation could refer to and what work each of us had made in the past that could refer to our chosen theme of 'Appropriation'. We discussed the many references to appropriation used within art such as reproduction, duplication and 'where may lie the authentic'. I found out about how William Hogarth produced prints of his paintings to be distributed, only for people to copy this idea. This meant that the quality of work as lowered as there were many duplicates. This brought upon the idea of copyright, which we discussed what we may think this to be.

As a group we went round and showed each other a piece that we thought we could link to Appropriation. I showed my Foundation video piece were I took Andy Warhol's 'Superstars' screen test idea, and filmed myself in the same style, with the pretentious background music of the Velvet Underground.

 

 

We also discussed initial ideas we had and I mentioned my 'Fallen Woman' performance idea.

I had also had a quick idea that everyone seemed to enjoy. I've taken the idea of Marina Abramovic's piece 'Rhythm 0', where she laid out a series of items such as chains, roses and a gun and turned it into a less serious piece, where I'd lay out silly things such as water guns and silly string, and the audience are guided to use them upon me. I may pursue this idea as a quick experiment for this project.

After the meeting had finished, I decided to post in our group about what we had discussed, partly for those who weren't there, but also to get the group discussion up and running.

 

 

 

Last week I tore down all the past work in my studio to be able to start a fresh. I realised that I had also taken some photos which I will display below of the aftermath. It felt liberating to start a raw canvas and erratically get rid of the past work I had been doing that I felt was bogging me down.

It also sparked some new ideas in me and worked upon some late night ideas I had already had. Starting a new project is always a tough one to break into, so I had been taking my camera around with me as often as I could for quick photos. I came across this very menacing splatter of what looks like a red-brown substance.

It was right next to the very tall art building of my university and it just looked very sinister, yet intriguing.

I've had a few ideas come to me late at night, to do with the idea of the 'Fallen Woman' and biblical imagery. The term the 'Fallen Woman' appears to me to describe a woman who has 'lost her innocence' and fallen from the grace of God. The terms 'Jezebel' and 'Harlot' get thrown around a lot and I think I can relate it to my own experiences in the modern day, and slut shaming. I have briefly been part of works where I have played the character of Mary Magdalene in my friends fashion photography portfolio.

I've also been briefly looking into the 'Magdalene Laundries' of the past and the kind of women that were sent there. I was reminded of the 2002 film 'The Magdalene Sisters', a very powerful film about 4 teenage girls sent to an Irish asylum in order to be 'redeemed'

I feel very strongly about these kind of institutes, and the attitudes towards women in the past when they were promiscuous, adulterous and disgraced for having sex before marriage. My own grandmother was a victim of these ridiculous opinions and had to secretly give away her first born to society as she was not married. The work I will make towards this theme will be very personal and experiment with performance.
I've chosen to branch out into performance as it's unknown and briefly investigated territory to me, and I feel that the work will translate better through this medium.
Also I witnessed my first ever live performance piece a few weeks ago at the Manchester Art Gallery. They hosted a night called 'In Emergency Break Glass: The Feminist Takeover', where several happenings occurred over the night. In one of the galleries we were led in to surround an artist called Riike Enna and witnessed her performance 'Future of Venus'. We saw Enna being covered in white modroc, completely cut off from her surrounding and standing in emulation of a marble statue.

I stood quite near to this piece and as time passed we saw Enna start to wobble and grow agitated in this white casing. She started to hyperventilate, then fell to the ground, cracking the modroc. She started to rip off all of the bandages and chalky substance from her body until we were confronted with this womans complete naked body. She started to realise her surroundings and slowly gathered up all the modroc she had torn off her body and screamed. She kicked the pile into the audience and calmly walked off in almost defiance. I found this performance very powerful. It didn't feel acted, it felt like the artist had been reborn during her performance. She went from a fragile statue to an angsty woman angered by the fact she had ben bound up. The setting of the piece was perfect, she was surrounded by old paintings by males of the past, that in my opinion have forced women into a certain form in art.
Further on my own ideas for performance, I've planned to emulate Enna's piece in its sudden agitation. I plan to enter a room that contains a set up of a bucket of water and white laundry. I will come in, fall to my knees and begin scrubbing these already clean garments. I plan to scrub until my hands bleed, somehow by doing this with prosthetics. This piece will also imitate Marina Abramovic's 'Balkan Baroque' where she sat scrubbing cow bones for 6 hours a day.

The piece brought out a lot of emotion in Abramovic as she told stories of Belgrade where she was born. I want relate my emotion of scrubbing the clothes back to the feelings of the women of the past who were shamed for their personal lives. I will possibly wear a red dress to contrast the white garments I will try to wash, yet stain with my own impurities. As I mentioned before, my ideas have had links to biblical imagery, such as stigmata's. This is where sores, pains or blood pours from the palms of the hands, corresponding to the wounds created by Jesus's crucifixion. After watching David Bowie's rather contraversial music video for 'The Next Day' I was inspired by the scene where a character who is in reference to Mary Magdalene suddenly spurts blood from her palms. She is initially portrayed as an alluring woman stood drinking alone in a shady nightclub, until a priest dances with her and she begins to erratically fall to the ground suffering a stigmata.

She is suddenly reborn and is more pure in appearance, like that of the Virgin Mary.

 I feel that all the information I have gathered so far can be stitched together in order to create my performance. I'm very excited to work upon in it, and hope I can present it successfully as part of this unit.

I am currently a first year Fine Art student at the Manchester School of Art. I have been assigned a new project titled 'Unit X' where it is key for me to keep a blog of my research and progress along the way. I have chosen to create work towards the theme of 'Appropriation', which will be part of an exhibition at Federation House in Manchester. I will work collaboratively with other students on my course, as well as students from Art History and Curation.
I chose this theme after having a taster session on Wednesday the 18th of March, where I briefly met a member of each of the group themes, were people from the Art History and Curation would explain what the subject was about. These themes were:

• Memory
• Everyday
• Ruins
• Appropriation
• Chance
• Time

I initially wanted to pick 'Time' as I thought I could make work towards that concept, but after seeing what the Appropriation group had to offer, I thought it was probably easier for me to relate past works that I have created to that theme. I only knew what this term meant vaguely so I have been looking into brief definitions of what it could mean.

The group presenter had several images displayed that I found intriguing, I was particularly drawn in by the links to one of my favourite artists Cindy Sherman. It was explained that Sherman was linked to appropriation as she uses the imitation of B-movies and celebrity photos. To me imitation is a key element in appropriation, as you are recreating an image of something or someone else.

I also saw works by Damien Hirst, Andy Warhol and some collage artists, and it got me thinking about how appropriation can be translated into many different practices of art. I will research a bit more into artists I can relate to appropriation and report back upon them.
In my own development of work so far I have chosen to restart all over again with ideas and themes. I work in the time based art field and still want to continue this practice but I want to branch out from things I have looked into in the past. I feel like I am stuck in the same circle of work and I want this project to open new doors. In my studio I went in and ripped everything off my walls as quick as I could to escape referring back to old research. I have filmed this and you can watch it at the link below: