December 2013 Review

I have fallen behind my planned schedule in November, December. this is probably because I am preparing for Christmas and getting presents for my 26 nieces, nephews and God children.Also because my son has had a psychotic episode and is back in hospital.

I have to allow myself some time off and get back to work when things settle.
I didn't do much in November, but have been able to do some research in December.

I  have been researching snakes and their 'disgust factor' (post 'Sinful snakes')
I have looked at the idea that deformity and signs of disease in the human body are elicitors of disgust.
(Posts: 'Grotesque Goddess' 16.12.13 and 'Inside Out' 16.12.13)

sinful snake

I know that snakes are a common stimulant of  the emotion of disgust. This could be because of the Biblical reference of the serpent; the evil tempter in the garden of Eden. It could also be the result of a more ancient and primal training to keep us away from things that could hurt us.  The way snakes move on their bellies in a sideways slither can be very unsettling and cause a shudder.

I set up a shoot with a small black snake, some fur and feathers. I was trying to create the idea of the snake being a predator, silently stalking its prey.

As I was going to cut and rotate sections from the image several times to compose my image, the original composition was not important.

From these originals I mage  repetitive and kaleidoscopic patterns. I am hiding the source of fear and disgust.

The snake has been reduced to a shiny, textured, arching curved bar within the pattern.

My manipulation has created a deco-style design. It is interesting how the eye is led around the image and new forms jump out from it. There seem to be moths and other insects lurking there.

However, these images do not cause jolt of recognition as the subject matter is too well hidden. Also the image is too regular in its form and quite seductive and calming. There is a gothic feel, similar to the vine images, created by the strands and fibres of fur, but I do not think it feels sinister. I will have to ask  for feedback.

Hurst's A Thousand Years

The piece consists of a large glass-sided, sectioned box containing a rotting cow's head, flies, maggots, sugar water and a fly ‘zapper’.  It is a life-cycle enactment that has continued to function in this enclosed environment since 1990 when it was made. According to Jerry Saltz (1995) writing in Art in America: ‘Given that the average life span of a fly is three to four weeks, there have been upwards of 60 generations of flies within the piece since 1990’ In the image below, the cow's head is 'new' but now all the skin and ears have been stripped off and it is pink and softer in shape.

www.artinamericamagazine.com/newsfeatures/magazine/more-life-the-work-of-damien-hirst

 In an interview with Tate director, Nicholas Serota, Hurst said that this was the most exciting piece he felt he had ever made. (Searle, 2012) In the same Guardian review, Searle describes the piece as ‘Clean and dirty, full of life and death, formally shocking and rich, it has an air of maturity and finality’http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/apr/02/damien-hirst-tate-review

These contradictions and binary opposites are what I am trying to incorporate in my installation.

I have been considering adding maggots to my curiosity cabinet to allow them to feed on sugar sprinkled onto a photographic kaleidoscope of rotten meat, but that all seems a bit  too obvious and clichéd having realised that Hurst’s A Thousand Years was created almost 24 years ago!!

 I know that the use of creative plagiarism is O.K in the art world and that every artist has been inspired by previous work, but Hurst is so well known and 24 years is almost too recent, but I am not sure if I can move forward with this idea. I was going to use maggots, flies and possible spiders and other insects like cockroaches  not to represent the life/ death cycle as in A Thousand Years but to comment on the inevitability of decay and chaos not matter what we do to control and forestall it. But I do not want people to look at my piece and say ‘Oh yes, Damian Hurst’...

Grotesque Goddess

Linking with the idea of human disgust at appearance that is considered ‘Ugly’ the opposite of our notion of ‘Beautiful’, is ORLAN’s plastic surgery project, The Reincarnation of Saint-Orlan. This is a series of 9 procedures which are filmed and photographed at every stage.IMAGE
She describes it as “re-creating the self through deliberate acts of alienation.” The way she has reconstructed her face is both discomforting and horrifying. She is very brave to have become something that is visually not ‘feminine’ and also hardly recognizable as human. ORLAN wants to expose how the nature of female beauty has been falsely constructed using templates from Western Masters like The Mona Lisa and Boticelli's Venus and the facial features of Greek Goddesses such as Diana. She has ‘horns’ on her temples and various implants under her skin on her cheeks and chin. The contradiction in ORLAN’s work is that by using a combination of various features that are considered ‘Beautiful’ she has created something Grotesque. The images are from the website below prepared for a series of lectures by Professor E. Heckendorn Cook (2003)

http://oldsite.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/ecook/courses/eng114em/carnal.htm

  

  

Inside Out

 Landreth,(2004)

Continuing with the sense of disgust that humans feel when confronted with damage or deformity in others, the animated film ‘Ryan’(2004) By Chris Landreth presents an  interesting form of this damage. It tells the life story of Ryan Larkin in the form of an animated documentary built on the actual interview with Ryan.

Landreth shows his own and Ryan’s psychological damage and scars ‘on the outside’ in the form of gaps and holes in the body or brain of the main characters. The ravages of alcohol and drug addiction were represented by thin arms stripped of flesh with twisted bones showing; or a face that had dissolved, taking one eye with it.

Some physical abuse is usually visible on the outside of the body, but psychological damage and trauma are often kept hidden, locked in our memories or even expunged from our conscious minds and pushed below the surface. This is perhaps because the experiences are too painful or distressing to face or because they cause shame. They may think that others will be disgusted by what is presented to them. It is a fascinating idea to almost turn the body inside-out and show on the outside that which is normally hidden.

October 2013 Review draft

I have had a massive 'work spurt' this month! I seem to have periods of frantic activity where I get a lot done. This is the start of my Final Project and I have lots of ideas to explore and exhibitions to visit.
Having the targets for each individual week mapped out in front of me in the planning table is quite a good way of motivating myself to get stuff done.
I have looked at insects as another elicitor of disgust and made some images. I visited museums and galleries. I have discovered that some methods of learning do not work for me!! (post: Photoshop Session) I have learnt from a student the proper way to flip a section of image either vertically or horizontally. He explained slowly while I was doing it.This will make a big difference in the accuracy of my images.

Flipping horizontally and vertically

I studied Gymnastics at college and learnt to do all kinds of flips  and vaults over the horse-'long arm over-swing', 'neck spring', 'forward and back flips'…
 When I learnt to manipulate sections of images to make the kaleidoscopic effect, I related the steps back to learning to vault. This sounds crazy, but must be connected to my Kinaesthetic learning style!

I have a set of hand written notes next to me while I am doing this and work very slowly, with lots of mistakes!

To start with, I select a section from the original image that 'has a lot going on in it'. By that I mean interesting shapes, contrasting light and colours.

The area in the centre with a combination of dark and pale branches and some grass in the background looks interesting.
 I cut a section using the select tool, create a new page,  and drop the new section onto it.

Then I copy that layer 6 times. Sometimes I do up to 22 sections, but I start with 6.
Using command and 'T' I select a copied section and line it up exactly alongside the original section.

Then using Edit,- Transform,- flip Vertical or Horizontal, I start to create symmetry.

I build up the image in blocks, making the pattern radiate out from the centre. At this stage I have to make choices about how I want the pattern to develop. I try to imagine the finished shapes once all the sections have been lined up and flipped. I can choose to create a flower-like structure, with the shaped radiating from the centre, or I can focus on drawing shapes out to the borders of the image, to frame it.

As the image builds up, I either get excited or disappointed as I can see how it is going to look when complete. I finish it anyway just to see if my prediction is right. here I stopped at 4 sections as I thought there was enough detail in it to make a strong and interesting image that draws you into the centre, then leads your eyes along the coral like, intertwined branches.

I can either make the final image bigger and more complex by continuing to build up the tiles, or I reach a stage when I think it is finished. Sometimes it is hard to stop, as I want to see what happens when I keep adding!
Then I flatten the image and apply any colour and contrast adjustments. (again using my scribbled notes)

The final Image:

I added a black frame and have increased the black level using curves, this darkens the background, bringing the organic shapes into sharper contrast. The black from the frame has crept into the image at the top and bottom. Although this is unintentional, I quite like the effect. But I will have to find out how to stop this happening. I will ask one of my Creative Arts students.
I try to save each piece of work with a memorable name and number in series as I have found it hard sometimes to find images again. My filing needs more attention, but I am getting there! I now have a collection of themed folders on my desktop like 'Twigs' and 'Gothic'

The Mutter Museum

This is a medical Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia which displays preserved, bottled, stuffed, polished bodies, organs, skulls, growths all illustrating the effects of deformity and disease. A woman called Gretchen Worden was the curator from 1982 and increased the number of visitor dramatically, from hundreds to thousands by T.V appearances where she showed off some choice exhibits. After her death, a room was named after her.

An article in the New York Times describes the room that was opened in September 2005.
‘There are jars of preserved human kidneys and livers, a man’s skull so eaten away by syphilis that it looks like a pounded rock. There are dried severed hands shiny as lacquered wood, showing their veins like leaves...and Jim and Jo the green-tinted corpse of a two headed baby, sleeping in a bath of formaldehyde’

I think if I had given birth to Jim and Jo I would not let them be pickled and put on display to horrify and titillate the visitors! I wonder how these specimens were procured? Mothers were probably told that they would not want to see their dead baby as it was 'horribly deformed.'
But you would think that the parents would want to have a proper burial. I don't think they were given the choice.

The Abject

The art I am looking at could be described as ‘Abject’ because it is made in response to or to evoke a sense of disgust and even fear like decay, death, bodily waste and so on. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines Abject as ‘... craven, self- debasing, degraded, despicable’

Kristeva, (1982)  in her essay on Abjection suggests that we are repelled and draw to it at the same time. It is all the things that threaten our own cleanliness and sense of propriety. So seeing vomit or blood, an open wound, an oozing sore are abject. She says that seeing a dead body is repulsive to us as we are forced to face someone who has been ‘cast out’ of our cultural world. It reminds us that we are all just organic matter and will rot away.

The biological recognition of the Abject is nausea, panic and fear. I did feel a sense of mild disgust when I looked at Sherman’s  work depicting discarded food and vomit. But I also wondered how she made the vomit and imagined her setting up the shoot in her home studio. My practical side blocked the disgust.

Kristeva, J. Powers Of Horror: An Essay On Abjection. Columbia University Press, 1982

Vomit

During my research I have discovered that there is a globally felt repulsion at bodily fluids-things from the inside of our bodies that have come outside. There is a sense of 'wrongness' about this. We don't want to be reminded that we are made up of sometimes smelly and unpleasant substances. That we are organic beings that can rot and die.

Cindy Sherman ‘Untitled – 175′ (1987)

This photo from the ‘Disaster Series’ is firstly a constructed beach setting with sand, sun cream, sunglasses and a towel. But then there are food remains and vomit strewn over the scene and a worried looking woman reflected in the sunglasses. Sherman seems to be commenting on the sad phenomenon of bulimia where food is gorged, then vomited. It suggests loneliness and self- revulsion. The woman has removed herself and seems to be looking in disgust at what she has done to herself.

I like the landscape composition created by shooting the image at a low level. This has stretched and warped the objects making them into lakes and hills. The predominance of green adds to the decomposed and repulsive effect. According to Ruth White (2009) in her blog ‘Sherman shows her audience that women who take part in these performative acts are killing their own identity and eventually perhaps their physical selves’

I was looking at this series of images as research for my kaleidoscopes based on sections of images of rotten meat, blood, bones, flies and a dying orchid. My comment was in response to the old combination of beauty and decay existing side by side in our lives.

disgust in signs of deformity or disease

Had to make a visual note of these three images all showing growths on the face. I suppose the face is the first and most obvious visual feature that represents who we are and shows our personality and changing moods. That is why any deformity here is most startling as we have to walk around showing it to the world every day.

 Julie Cockburn

LucyandBart

Huntarian Museum, Glasgow University.


Disgust at signs of physical deformity and disease is a global reaction, as researched and discussed by Rachel Herz, a lecturer at Browns University.

Herz, R. (2012) 'That's Disgusting:Unravelling the Mysteries of Disgust' NewYork:W.W. Norton & Co. Inc

The Huntarian Museum

Continuing with the theme of display of objects but also looking at the seduction/repulsion effect, I visited this museum in Lincoln's Inn Field. It was opposite the John Soans Museum that I visited a few months ago.

John Hunter was a surgeon in the 18^th Century who was a pioneer of the systematic and scientific approach to the study of anatomy. He amassed a collection of specimens giving examples of diseases and deformities including preserved embryos and giant skeletons. It is believed that Hunter obtained the 7’7” skeleton of the giant Charles Byrne, having it delivered to the back of his house by grave robbers. (‘Inside Out London’ BBC Oct.2013) I wonder if his family knew about this? The specimens were collected for study by new surgeons and the furthering of knowledge and understanding. However as was probably the case with 19^th Century visitors, you cannot help but experience a strange shivery thrill of wonder and horror at the same time. This is the clash and jolt experience I would like to create in my work.

The crystal room Huntarian Museum

 

Female Skull. Huntarian Museum

 

This is the skull of a 19th century woman who had a terrible bony tumour growing on her face for the period of 3 years. I presume it finally cut off her airways and killed her.

 The red 'Dymo' label attached to the glass case seems to mock and somehow diminish the skull, putting  it into the category of specimen number 72A.1- divorcing it from the living woman who existed in that skull.

There is close resemblance to this original deformity and the created deformities of both  Lucy and Bart and other one.

 

Vines

I took some images of old grape vines that were clinging to the ancient walls of the kitchen garden at Waddeston Manor in Buckinghamshire. The little suckers that had held the vine fast were still stuck fast to the wall even though they were not supporting anything any longer. There were shrivelled red leaves and stems still clinging to the vine, but any grapes had been picked of had dried and dropped to the ground.

For some reason, this image had a sense of gothic melancholy.

 I love the texture of the ancient wall behind it and the fact that even though it looked decayed and dried up, it would flourish and bear fruit again next spring.

This was in the same garden but on a different wall which was much warmer and more golden.
I carefully sliced a section out of the image and multiplied and manipulated it to create a truly Gothic
 image. I was thinking about the themes of life and death and how they are side by side in our daily lives. We know that we are all going to die but don't really want to talk about it or be reminded of it. The dried out vine looks dead but retains beauty in its stretching tendrils and curving stems.

I wanted to create symmetry and a sense of harmony from the dead- looking vine.
This has a SteamPunk look and I love the delicate little red tendrils like veins carrying blood to the dried up, parched twigs.

Whilst reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kinsolver, I found this passage that fits well with this series of images. She was describing the forest of the Congo.

'Vines strangling their kin in the wrestle for sunlight...
'A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. The forest eats itself and lives forever' (Kinsolver 607/8)

I hope I have created a sense of that wrestling and a hint of evil lurking in the twisted stems.
But the bright red stalks represent the vibrancy existing alongside the dead.

The sandstone that the vine is clinging to has interesting marks and scratches on it which have added to the texture of the background, making it look like pale grained wood.

Cabinet of Curiosities

I found an old tool box that my neighbour had thrown out and thought it might be a useful way of displaying my work.








I decided to leave the cobwebs and accumulated dust on it as an extra skin.
Cabinets of Curiosities were used to display valuable collections of Natural Science objects, valuable jewels or ores, and even objects from tribes or ancient civilisations whose use was unknown.

I tried laying out a kaleidoscope image that had been made from shells and flowers, then I added the component parts that had made up the image along the little shelf. It was like saying this is what life is made of, a collection of  little, inconsequential experiences, joys and sorrows. But how you use those incoscequences and weave them together to make a firm and substantial life is up to each individual.

I continued by filling the box with artefacts of curiosity and interest which may or may not have been used to create the final image above them. These need to be much more carefully and symmetrically laid out and perhaps labeled with little brown tags like in a museum. I would also like to test out building a perspex lid on the lower section and introducing cockroaches, spiders or perhaps ants or flies to that section. Damian Hurst cow's head and flies-death and rebirth. to add

Planning

I need to log, record and reflect on my progress and planning for my final Project. However,
it needs to be evaluative, and reflective on my final piece as an aesthetic cultural artefact and its relationship to work in the forefront. I have to comment on links drawn between other innovative work and my own.

I plan to continue researching and studying the work of other artists who use fragmentation, refraction, reflection, repetition and symmetry in their work. I will also seek out also those artists who convey horror, repulsion, ugliness or the convergence or juxtaposition of those senses and their opposites; pleasure, attraction, beauty. I am interested in installation and the use of sound and motion combined with my photography. I would like to collaborate with creatives from other disciplines within the Creative Arts. I have ideas about creating something that an audience can participate in and interact with; perhaps setting off unpleasant or unsettling reactions.
Psychology deals with bringing to light those fears, experiences, thoughts we would rather keep hidden. The 'Trickster' according to Freud or Jung's 'Shadows'. In order to become whole, we need to get those fears out into the light and confront them.
My work reflects a need to create order and beauty; to smooth things over and make bad or frightening experiences and objects more palatable and aesthetically pleasing. Louise Bourgeois described  creating work as being her therapy. Yayio Kosama stated that without her art she would go mad. There seems to be a fine line between creativity and madness. Perhaps by confronting my fears and accepting  that life is never ordered and 'perfect'  I am administering my own therapy and portraying a sense of calm as  created by a mesmerising symmetrical image.
 Am I trying to say ' Horror and fear and misery exist in life, but you can avoid them, hide them, ignore them' But I am beginning to look back at the edges of my shadows and perhaps beginning to peep into their depths. I have not been brave enough to confront them face to face, let them fall across me and take my light...
 I am subdued by other peoples expectations, needs and demands. I have the role of the glue that holds my family and friends together. Just as I want to manipulate images into a more perfect, detailed and balanced whole, I am forever trying to do the same for people.

I have always liked installations and art that lure you in, then give you a shock, a jolt, an unexpected, sometimes unpleasant discovery or realisation.
To Jar is a good way to describe this effect.
according to www.thefreedictionary.com
To jar is to:
 disturb or irritate
to startle, unsettle, shock
to have a harshly unpleasant or perturbing effect on one's nerves or feelings
To have a sudden unsettling effect upon the mind, feelings or senses.

I do not have an unnatural fascination with death or the macabre, but it seems that I am being drawn in that direction. From my earlier research into the Memento Mori in Dutch paintings to the use of insects, meat and animal parts in my own work I am moving on to the fascination with the contrast between death and beauty.
 In the Dutch still life, there are little winged or multi- legged reminders amidst the flowers that beauty will fade, disease will invade you and you will die. In the 16th century the continuation of that message may have been-so repent and be a good Christian and earn a better, never ending life in heaven. But today the message is more like-so do everything you want, have surgery to look young, you deserve to have experiences and adventures, lots of sex with whoever you choose, a bucket list to tick off,  an expensive lifestyle, watch, holiday, car... Death will still catch up with you though! I once heard a woman discussing her plastic surgery on the train. One fragment was:
'I want to be the best looking corpse in the grave yard' which struck me as a very sad and unusual ambition!

Panspermia

I was advised to look at the work of Simeon Nelson, a lecturer at UH.
I have seen him around the building, but never spoken to him. Now, since looking at his work, I feel I know him. He seems to be interested in creating a whole, detailed and beautiful image out of scraps and found or observed objects. His technical skill is much more advanced than mine.

     'Love will tear us apart'  (2002)

 I love the way he layers objects from disparate sources over each other, causing the viewer to hunch closer to the screen and examine the seemingly 3D patterns that draw you in until you feel you might fall  and go spiralling down through the leaves and electrical circuits and crash into the delicate skulls down below!
I want to create that sense of depth which I think my work lacks at the moment.
Nelson seems to have created a new world that crashes Science and Nature together.

Wasteland (2002)

 The roots and vines here are overlaid onto bright scraps and rubbish gathered from forgotten places.The effect is that of lace or fine embroidery.

In response to this work, I used an image I took on a walk, of branches and twigs covered completely with lichen. I like the green and yellow tones.

Coles (2013) Twigs

Lucy and Bart

These artists from Australia and The Netherlands collaborated on a project to 'Showcase a future where the search for beauty is altered with plastic surgery.'
There deformed and ridiculous human shapes poke fun at the extremes people will go to to be seen as 'beautiful' There is a fine line between beauty and ugliness. Too much of a good thing pushing and tipping the human form into a distortion and ridicule of nature.
This first image uses textiles to create exaggerated, colourful 'growths' on the face just as Cockburn created in the last post.

 Julie Cockburn

 LucyandBart

 The female form above seems to have been transformed into a kind if half woman half insect super hero. But the apparent strength and power as represented by the pose and the muscular shapes are deflated by the obvious use of tights to hold all the added lumps on! This adds a sense of the absurd.

The image above have been created by building soft sensuous forms almost like intestines or human organs that have been loaded and entwined round the  the body in deformed lumps and oozing soft layers like fat rolls. He looks like a baby encased in a giant insect lava. The clash of human/insect forms and the presentation of Humour and disgust at the same time are similar to what I am aiming to convey in my practice too. 

This work is truly at the forefront as the artists are considering  contemporary themes-of personal identity and body politics, but are representing them in a completely new way.

LucyandBart.co.uk 

www.flowersgallery.com/artists/julie-cockburn