Research

Research

ORLAN

Born Mireille Suzanne Francette Porte, she's a French artist, who is most famous for disfiguring her body for art. I decided to research her because of this, as I have a curious nature for all things different. ORLAN, went under the knife for plastic surgery several times in 1990-1995, not to make herself more appealing, by editing herself for beauty or youth but to add disfigurements.

http://www.orlan.eu/

"No, my goal was to be different, strong; to sculpt my own body to reinvent the self. It's all about being different and creating a clash with society because of that. I tried to use surgery not to better myself or become a younger version of myself, but to work on the concept of image and surgery the other way around. I was the first artist to do it," - ORLAN.

 ( Quote from http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/jul/01/orlan-performance-artist-carnal-art, paragraph 7 )

http://www.orlan.eu/wp-content/gallery/operation-reussie-1990/ORLAN57J.jpg

http://www.orlan.eu/wp-content/gallery/operation-omnipresence-1993/09.jpg

http://www.orlan.eu/wp-content/gallery/operation-omnipresence-1993/SurgeryPerformance_Omnipresence_5_72dpi.jpg

Lucy Lyons

Lucy is a member of the Medical Artists Association and accreditation of Medical illustration Practitioners, that draws diseases and deformed humans. I'm interested in her work because she draws imperfections and defects of the human body, although the drawings are very plain in colour they are filled with detail. I'm really fascinated by her specimen jar/case drawings, since it's something I'm curious about, as I want to produce peoples flaws into specimen jars this year.

http://www.lucylyons.org/

http://www.lucylyons.org/projects/4886474#5


Giuseppe Penone

Penone is a conceptual artist and sculptor, the piece I practically like of his is The Tree Will Continue to Grow Except at This Point. He placed an iron cast of his clutching a sapling in the Maritime Alps, so it would still grow but develop around the grip of the hand. I find this intriguing, as it is across between human and nature, I think he is trying to show how we effect our own earth and nature, like leaving our imprint on the world.

http://www.moma.org/collection/theme.php?theme_id=10454

http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/blog/richard-longgiuseppe-penone-haunch-of-venison-london/

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/giuseppe-penone-1754

http://terrestra.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/mano_penone.jpg


Jason DeCaires Taylor


Jason graduated from the London institute of arts in 1998 with a BA Honours in sculpture and then went on to qualify as a diving instructor. Jason has over eighteen years of diving experience, he has also won awards for  underwater photography. He created the first underwater sculpture park in 2006, which is situated off the coast of Grenada, in the west Indies. The underwater sculpture park is listed as one of the top twenty-five wonders of the world, by National Geographic. One of this other pieces of submerged work he has done is a collection of five hundred sculptures place off the coast of Cancun, Mexico,that artwork is titled MUSA (Museo Subacuatico de Arte).

http://www.underwatersculpture.com/about/biography/

 The reason I like Jason's work is because he does human sculpture parks but underwater. They really do look amazing and transform as the water weathers the piece, while one bit decays, the ocean also brings it to life with bacteria and plant life. His work has really inspired me to experiment with my ideas of underwater experimentation in the past, I love how the pieces peer deformed, while they decompose with the sea life covering them, but still giving a silhouette of a person. 

http://www.underwatersculpture.com/sculptures/overview/

Mathilde Roussel

Mathilde is a French artist that is base in Paris, she is another sculptor that caught my eye as she uses wheat seeds in some of their human sculptures, I'm really liking 'Lives of grass', the natural looking sculptures made out of living plant life does intrigue me. The figures are suspended in mid air, as well as on the floor, so you can walk around and admire the pieces in their full glory. The grass pieces amaze me, as they start to grow and the grass gets older, it looks like it's going through the ages of a persons life, I think the artist was aiming for this with the artwork. 

https://anti-utopias.com/artist/mathilde-roussel/

https://anti-utopias.com/art/mathilde-roussel-lives-of-grass/

Pieces information- Soil, wheat seeds, structured from recycled metal and fabric.

http://www.mathilderoussel.com/files/gimgs/23_mathilde_roussel_lifesofgrass_12.jpg



Juuke Schoorl

Juuke is a Dutch photographer, the project 'REK' 2014 (which means stretch in Dutch) is what I am more interested in, within her work. She manipulates the skin with normal household things like cello-tape, while stretching the models skin with such materials, she then takes picture of distortion. I love how a simple thing like cello-type can deform the body and make it into something different, it shows how the human body is durable and can be manipulated into different shapes. Although the model is youthful, Juuke has placed the tape in away that makes her back look weathered or old, kind of like she is wearing a waistcoat, which really differentiates the difference between the two skin types.

http://www.juuke.nl/photography/rek/

http://www.ignant.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Juuke-Schoorl-Rek_01.jpg

Jonathan Yeo

Jonathan Yeo is a British artist born in London, in the 70s and does portraits of famous people. Although that is not why I like his work, he does oil paintings of surgery, which I stumbled across looking for artists which play with plastic surgery. The work is amazing, the detail of the person and the artistic fade out makes the pieces look old, like diagrams from a old fashioned medical book.

http://jonathanyeo.com/about/biography/

http://jonathanyeo.com/work/secondary-augmentation-mastopexy/

http://jonathanyeo.com/work/

Gillian Wearing - Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say (1992-3)

After getting the idea for projecting and sign holding of feeling words, then photographing it, I remembered that I had seen something similar from another artist, but for the life of me I couldn't remember their name. Eventually after help I found out the artist's name and that was Gillian Wearing. The photographs fit with what I want to achieve, even though the context of her work may not, as she works with members of the public. She went to a busy place in South London, asked people to write down what was on the persons mind and with permission photographed them holding their statement. 

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wearing-im-desperate-p78348/text-summary

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wearing-im-desperate-p78348

Journey project, idea and artist research.

Idea

We've been given a brief about journeys, so I've decided for this project I am going to go out walking around my local area and I shall be leaving random footprints in the surrounding environment. This Idea came to me while discussing this with one of my tutors Jo, as I want to carry on with my casting, that I had done in previous years. The idea that I had was to make a mark of my journey, while walking around and leaving a personal imprint. So I decided to do bare footprints and pour plaster into them, I was going to take the plaster casts back out again, but I have recently changed my mind. I'm just going to leave them where they lay and see what happens to them, maybe my journey will fade because of the weather or other interaction with them, but who knows. While doing all this I will make  photographic documentation of my journey and what I have done, so people can see where my journey was and goes.

Artist research

The artists that mainly inspired me for this are Richard Long and Clare Twomey.

What inspired me about Richard Long's work is that he works with nature but he is also changing it. Richard makes paths of his walked journeys, by adapting the environment he is in, either by adding things like stones or taking things away. He then has the piece photographed to go into books or other sources, to display his work, as you can see my idea resembles Richard's work concept and how it's linked to inspire me. 

http://www.richardlong.org/Sculptures/sculptures11.html

http://www.richardlong.org/Sculptures/2011sculpupgrades/dusty.html

The other artist I found was Clare Twomey, although she works more with ceramics, there is one piece of hers I found really interesting, that piece was 'Consciousness/Conscience.' The art work is a ceramic installation, made of a thousand hollow unfired bone china tiles. Which are laid on the floor, so you have to walk across them to get to other parts of the exhibition, while you do this you leave a path of broken tiles. I liked this idea as you created you own path, within this part of the exhibition and that's something I want to do within this project. Which is to go out and recreate my own paths, journeys, while leaving my imprint on the walks.

http://www.claretwomey.com/consciousness_conscience.html

My work and experimentation

Experiment

The pictures above was my first attempt at making foot steps but then taking them back out. Which lead me to changing my mind and not to remove them, because it was destroying the environment too much. 

Unedited photographs

Here is my documentation of my outside journey art work.

Edited photographs

I couldn't decide which I liked best out of the photographs, edited or not, so I put both up. With the edited ones I changed the effect on them and colour, brightness, contrast and sharpness to the desired amount.  

9/10/14

Adaptation ideas in different environments


My tutor was asking me questions today on how I could carry on with this idea and adapt it into different places, so we talked about a few ideas, I could maybe do in the future. As my work was based on foot prints, I started to think of other ways of creating them inside.

1. Make a template of my foot out of card and use coloured powders.

I was thinking of making a stencil of my foot, then pouring coloured powder through it to make a journey of foot prints. This can be done on most flat floors, plus if other people walked across them the powder will make their journey too. I think this could be a possible and interesting project to do.

2.  Sand

You could make a sand pit, either dry or a little wet, then have people walk all over it to make prints. Or you could do the template of the foot again but with sand, maybe even coloured sand.

3. Roll out clay

What better way to make negative of a foot print than soft clay, it'll get all the definition of the foot. Plus with the same idea as above, you could let people make their own journey over yours and end up with a collage of prints.

4. Get some turf and put it inside.

Bring nature indoors, it's an odd place for it to be already and with the plaster filled foot steps, it would draw even more attention to it.


5. Paint feet and make foot prints with that.

You could do this anywhere and nearly on any surface, The street, walls, floors, roof, tables even. You could also have any colour and make it stand out as much or as little as you wanted.

6. Casts

I could make casts of my feet in different materials and leave them in places that I go, like a round the University or on a park bench.

7. Chalk

Could go back to your youth and draw around your feet with chalk, in various places.

There's so much you could do with marking your journey with foot prints, the list is probably endless but I can't go on forever.