High and Low #1

Contemporary art practice – component two

The second brief we were given at university was named High and Low. We were asked to create 15 pieces considering altitude, viewpoint, mood and cultural register. The 15 pieces had to be large scale, no smaller than A1 and they also had to be 2D: drawings, paintings, collage, etc. the idea for these pieces was to reverse logic and also look more in depth to the meaning of it.

I took inspiration from many artists and from things that surround me, as well as from my own emotions. I have written brief summaries on each piece and attached a photograph to each one.

Angelina Jolie

For the first piece I wanted to do something familiar to ease myself into the project, but I also wanted to experiment with new materials. Growing up I took influence from strong female characters in movies, Angelina Jolie is one of these women and even to this day I admire her work and the way she is so open about mental health, physical health and her life in general. I myself have had problems with mental health and growing up listening to someone I thought was amazing talk about their struggles, helped me to accept my own challenges and to face them. Jolie helped me through low points in my life. A reverse twist for this piece was taking someone I admire and someone who is famous and beautiful and make them out of trash materials. Degrading the character in an elegant way.

The materials I used for this piece were cardboard, various papers, ink, charcoal, chalk, gold leaf, black marker and masking tape.

I chose to pick away some of the cardboard background to add texture and feel of depth to the piece as it breaks apart the solid brown colour and softens the view. The masking tape over the eyes is a reference to taking away what I consider to be the most beautiful part of her, but also taking away her identity, essentially her fame. Some of the collaged paper includes maps and constellations, which I quite often like to include into my collage pieces, I feel like it adds another layer of visual texture and plays with the composition in terms of breaking solid colour. I used gold leaf on the body also, I wanted to have some reflection of her value, social status but also her value to me. Gold leaf is also a very fragile material to work with which I think can reflect on some aspects of my own mental health in the piece and it’s meaning.

In the piece I would improve the proportion. I drew this piece free hand using a magazine cut out and trying to figure out the scale instead of planning and working it out properly, which was a big mistake because it made her head and neck slightly too long. Other than this I am really happy with the piece.

Curve

In this piece I was looking into my feelings about the body, specifically my own. While I am the average dress size for a woman in the UK (size 12-14) this is considered plus size. I started researching into plus size models and looked into interviews where they have spoken about how they view their bodies. I felt very proud and empowered by the bodies of all these women and thinking about it was glad that I was also “curvy” but as soon as I looked at my own body in the mirror I instantly felt disgusted again and wanted the cliché “beach bod”. I can’t understand why my mind works like this and no matter how hard I try to change it and love my body I just can’t and that is the real high and low meaning behind this piece. That on one hand curves inspire me, but on the other, when it is my own I hate it.

I used cardboard, charcoal, white and burnt umber chalk for this piece.

I really enjoyed working on cardboard for the Angelina Jolie piece and so I continued it on into this piece also with the method of picking away the cardboard background to create texture and depth. I then drew the outline of a plus size models back, accentuating some of the curves be adding shadows and highlights with the white chalk and burnt umber chalk.

I am pleased with this piece, although I think that I could have made it bigger and focused more on the realism of the piece.

Brain Freeze

I created a series of the 15 pieces where I looked and played around with reverse rolls on food and words. For this piece I was starting to connect with theme of dementia and how the brain was once solid but now it melts away. I did this by representing a ice-lolly as a melting brain on a stick.

I am very pleased with this piece and I especially like the colours and symmetry in tone that I have used.

I used A1 paper, coloured ink pens and water to create this piece. It was very fast and efficient to do and because of this I would use the technique and medium again.

Boys have bananas

While looking at the relationship with food to the body and reverse rolls of food, I started to think of the metaphors that we are given as children, for example…. Boys have bananas and girls have peaches. This was an adult’s way of describing it to me as a child and I think of it now and how stupid it is, why not just use their proper names and educate the child properly? The piece is also meant to be quite comical, I think that it means something different to everyone depending on their mindset.

I used A1 paper and water colour paint for this piece. I am happy with the colouration of the piece and the size but I would have liked to make the background more interesting.

Cookie crumble & cold volcano

I was looking into the work of Claes Oldenburg and some of his drawings that depict reverse rolls n objects in landscapes. I decided to follow his example and take names of my favourite deserts and make them into comical scary natural disasters. I took things that were meant to be enjoyable and made them into unpleasant situations. For the cold volcano I reversed the rolls of hot and cold, turning a hot volcano into cold ice cream.

For this piece I used printed out photos, cut and trimmed to fit the scale I wanted for the piece, I also used some marker pen to add in small details and light use of acrylic for the background colours. I am happy with both pieces but I think that they could be more refined and professional instead of being rushed. I enjoy the concept and comical side to these pieces and got good feedback from my senior lecturer but I don’t want to pursue the concept anymore as I don’t feel it is very strong or has a good future in my work.

Silver spoon

With this piece I was looking at the saying of ‘born with a silver spoon in my mouth’ and how it relates to social class and wealth. I chose to use regal colour also that can be connected to purity to reflect the wealth. I wanted to take a pop-art styled approach, although I am not sure if I achieved this or not.

I used acrylic paint on paper for this piece. I am very pleased with how the piece looks and the texture in the brush marks of the piece and also the highlights and blending of colour. I would have liked to refine it a bit more and add some 3D elements to it.

Loser & okay

This was a two-part piece that linked. I made one piece for things I think are good about me and a piece I think is bad about me to show both my high and low feelings toward myself. I chose to use hand signs in the piece to give a clear visual representation of the theme of the piece as a way to draw in the viewer and then the repetitive writing is the main focus of the piece. I took inspiration from Fiona banner and her use of repetitive text in her work.

I chose to write words like fat, ugly, stupid, annoying, caring, friendly, smart, etc. in the pieces and layered the words on top of each other to create depth and texture.

I used acrylic paint on paper with biro pen to write the text. The use of the biro pen made it feel more down to earth and almost like writing in a diary. I was very self-conscious about this piece and found it almost impossible to write the text in front of people because they would ask what it was about.

I am happy with the text part of the piece but quite disappointed with how the hands look, If I have time I will go back and do it again because I really like the idea and the piece but I executed it badly.

Lips

This piece was using a similar style to the pieces before with repetitive writing. I lightly drew the shape of lips onto the paper and then masked off the negative space with masking tape. Using an ink diffuser and black and red ink I sprayed the lips on. This made it look a bit like a refined graffiti piece. I then added in the text writing sentences like ‘kisses that hurt’, ‘lips that lie’, ‘feed me’, etc. I chose this for high and low as I think that everything that comes out of the mouth goes into our highest and lowest moments in life. Its vital, but it also hurts.

I am pleased with the piece although there are some sections that I didn’t cover properly with the masking tape and as a result it smudged the ink.

Drip

I decided to create another collage for this piece and I wanted to use a low point. I chose to look at something that affects me and my family daily which is my younger brother’s illness, which he gets treatment for ever few weeks. I represented this quite literally out of scrap bits of paper. I made the arm quite pink with a slight orange tint and the metal pole was just from black and white paper. I made the medication bag and drip out of gold leaf. This was to state the obvious that the medication is like gold and is precious and more valuable to us than gold.

I am happy with this piece although I wish there was more texture in it and that the back ground wasn’t so white as it distracts from the actual piece.

Happy face

This piece is lots of self-portraits in one. Photos that I think I look nice in and I am smiling in. I made it into line drawings instead of detailed pictures due to the time limit I had to make the 15 pieces but also because something felt right about the line drawing. I then went over the lines with water to spread the colour and allow the ink pen to run and drip. I wanted to do this piece in various blues to show mood and feeling of sadness and depression. In my experience with depression I put on a very happy and friendly face but inside I feel the opposite and that is what I wanted to represent in this piece. I don’t think I would change anything about this piece except adding more layers and portraits to it to make it even more hectic and overflowing.

Brain scan

Something I have been dealing with lately Is the process of my grandfather having dementia and accepting that I need to start accepting that he will soon be gone. This has been one of my lowest points of my life so far and I wanted to show the physicality of that in this piece. I chose to use a MRI scan of a brain with dementia and how it loses density and brain matter. Also, that the colours of thought and brain activity become scarcer and centred to few areas.

I used ink pens with water for this piece and let it run and drip. This was a spur of the moment decision and I didn’t plan it, I just went with how I was feeling. Scribbling in assorted colours and hoping for the best and I think that shows which I really like.

High and low

For the final piece I did word reversals in ink and spray bleach. I wrote words and their opposites such as high/low, up/down, big/small, imagination/hesitation, confusion/illusion, etc… some of the words aren’t exact opposites but I also wanted them to rhyme so I had to make some exceptions and do my best with that.

I painted the words in warm vs. cold colours first and once it was dry I spray bleach onto it to absorb and take away the pigment, to make it into an almost faded strand of thought.

I am very happy with this piece and will probably work in this medium again.