Points of departure…. Points of connection

As a starting explorative work to continue to devolve in my on-going trajectories and practise this year, I initiated my first work on the bounds of a sociology experiment. The work is personified from multiple view points and perspectives of people describing bluntly and truthfully how they describe their appearances.

I had been interested in a commercial which a forensic artist would sit backed opposite to the sitter with a drafting board, also would the sitter be sitting back to the artist. The sitter would describe her facial features to the artist whilst he was conjuring an image she was describing.  The sitter would later spend time with a third arbitrary person who would eventually describe the initial sitters facial features which he would appropriate to a second drawing. The sitter would then following these two events be exposed to the two drawings which the forensic artist had sketched, one which the sitter had described of themselves and one a third person had described of the sitter. The one the sitter described of themselves would embody all the imperfections and negative emotions they carry on themselves, where as the sketch the third person described would emotively describe the person appearances accurately to there persona and visual identifications. It becomes acutely obvious that we are our worse critics. 

Something so emotively close to my own insecurities and imperfections, made me question how people describe their appearances and how close they really precede from the truth. 

So within this work I have asked a selection of people to describe themselves honestly and openly without any name to themselves. I then took a polarised photograph of their portrait.  Something I had not foreseen was how difficult it is to put how you think you look in words and emotions. So this became quite a time intensive work as people spent time with the work having forward conversation with themselves and the book describing intimately their appearances. The choice of book was obscenely arbitrary and completely bland of inferring motive’s. 

Presenting this work also became part of the initial experiment in our exhibition as I felt in no way was the work finished, maybe looking now it actually benefited the presentation of the work to have more potential and left open ended. The installation of the work was in two parts, the book sat flat and open on a white plinth approximately 1.5m from the wall which in order of the description, polarised photographs of each person were presented at directly appropriate to eye height with no further comment. 

The work and installation which i felt was a bases of experiment became entertaining and engaging in a multiple of levels, people felt they needed time with the artwork as conversations had already begun. Interests in the correlation between their perception and your perception were established and protruded. Critics felt that the work offered a much more intricate detail than what initially meets the eye. A relation to social work and sociology was made in how we understand and read photographs especially the format in which I choose and its approximate relation to Facebook, “selfless” and social media. Critics felt the participation of the work with-stands time as the simplistic work was very engaging and inviting the audience to become apart of the work whether there was a relation to the person or not. It was noted the the logic in how we read the work is opened up in a very elegant way being very post structuralist/ contemporary/ and outward. Lecturer Andy Thomson gave a few artists such as Andy Warhol and Thomas Struth to investigate portraiture, photography and their relation to reality.

2013-2014

Being in my final year of the BVA degree at Auckland University of technology I have new objectives in being able to operate as a critically aware artist. Making artwork and analytically reflecting conceptually and technically on the process and outcome of the artworks will become the developmental process of the foundation of insights, knowledge, and skills acquired to become a self directed artist. By extending, connecting and deepening into my on going practise as an artist I will become more so profoundly sensitive to visual language and critical perspectives.

With my previous trajectory of identity being a common manifest of this years direction and on-going art practise I wish to devolve in depth this idea.
In my final exhibition in 2013, my key areas of concern were identity as a state of becoming rather than a state of being. This was illustrated within the exploitative conditioning of repetitive means to illustrate change in ones identity. The contextual statement as follows illustrated an analytical understanding to the exhibiting works.

Within the 1950’s, identity immersed as a popular social science term, which was notably assigned to particular cultural, racial or sexual differences, but to the self-existential category.  Thus rather than critically suggesting a stable sense of selfhood, alternatively the term also was used to appropriate a problematic ‘identity crisis’ or a ‘search for identity,’ deriving from the individual’s alienation in the preface of a more profoundly anonymous society.  Its appears a search for identity along with an increasing self-reflexivity became more apparent in modern society, with the self being a common manifest within a contemporary art context.  Contentiously assuming that identity is a fixed, transparent concept, and somehow solidified within the mind, if not in reality, is far fixated from the truth condemning this assumption. Rather identity is futile, a construction of different layers and elements that are articulated through discourses and narratives.

Exploring identity through art underpins a tangible source of expression. Through exploring the human body we become engrossed within ones identity whether being notorious or concealed, we become oblivious to the problematic and contingent formality of identity.  Identity is always in a state of becoming rather than a state of being, with a multitude of elements always changing in time. A search for identity through repetitive means illustrates the change in ones identity through time. We become aware that this ‘search fort identity’ is an attempt to represent ones identity, which will not fully deem accurate at any given moment. 

2014