Research/Inspirations and Current ideas

I have found researching quite difficult recently as I have been more focused on the practical making side of my course but some works that have really inspired me lately are the ones shown below. They don’t all necessarily link to my work directly but I take little snippets of inspiration from wherever I can.

Min Jeong Seo- 'To Live On' 2005

"The stalks these flowers are already dried up but their blossoms are preserved and kept fresh by the medical infusion bags. The life-span of every living creature is limited.The infusion bags stand for the progress in medicine and the prolongation of human life.They somehow carry an ambivalent message as they refer to both death and life an the same time. Both states are immanent here. To preserve the beauty of the flowers artificially with the help of the infusion bags points out man’s inclination to repress the fact having to die and to postpone death"

Antony Gormley 

"All bodies are attracted to each other, and the relationship between man and dog is one of the oldest of attractions across species. The installation of BODIES IN SPACE V acknowledges that all bodies are bodies in space, whether they are the quarks and muons of the subatomic world, or the planets of a solar system."

Olivia Steele 

"Always symbolic and sometimes irreverent, her neon statements suspend time and motion. The interpretable phrases inhabit spaces of contradictory, confrontational or conciliatory meaning. They crystallize the unity between landscape, semiotics and spectacle that engenders myriad avenues for contemplation. "

Dongwook Lee

"His shrunken subjects are naked and isolated, and often times twisted to the point where they can hardly be called “human”, representing Lee’s abstract ideas about evolution, in-breeding, or even our own nightmarish perceptions of ourselves. He embodies the idea of physical “likeness” in his most recent sculptures, featuring humanoids with growths of pink-colored mushrooms and massive, heavy lumps of flesh that they are forced to carry. They are intended to be character studies as a means of exploring the increasingly complex concept of identity."

David Altmejd

"Altmejd explores materials, processes, and structures in metaphor-infused, diorama-like tableaux, consisting of taxidermy animals, bondage gear, crystals, Plexiglas, and the like. Altmejd's constructions only toy with the bounds of fantasy in order to interrogate concepts of a very human nature, those of vulnerability, beauty and decay."

Some theory I have also been interested in lately is the idea of searching for paradise, or for a better word utopia. How this is human desire and how it differs in each individual. There is a line from the movie interstellar that I found quite interesting and useful lately, it really made me stop and think about the kind of world we live in and about my surroundings.

 “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”

My way of thinking and the context of my work is constantly evolving and shifting, mostly centring around the body, the universe and history and how these all link together to formulate ideas.