14/11/19 - PRACTITIONER RESEARCH
Nadia Lee Cohen – ‘Beauty Pageant’
This series by Cohen, which I came across a number of years, made me think of creating the additional fourth image of the extreme ‘Face Tuned’ image, as it questions standards of beauty, just like this series.
"The idea of Beauty Pageants has always fascinated me, I am attracted to the stigma the surrounds them; whether from the controversy of child pageant stars, the awkward answers given to questions, or the mistakes made when presenting awards. I wanted to create a shoot inspired by the aforementioned controversial elements while maintaining the melodramatic and exaggerated glamour of beauty pageants."- Nadia Lee Cohen.
http://dmbrepresents.com/freshly-made/nadia-lee-the-pageant/
Alix Marie
On the 14th November, we had a lecture from photographer and artist Alix Marie, who uses influences from her childhood, heritage, relationships and mythology in her work. She discussed how she combines sculpture and photography to create outcomes, such as ‘Orlando’ (below) which consists of pictures of the body waxed and moulded to mimic marble and ancient statues. She discussed how she is interested in site-specific work and printing on unconventional materials. After she published her book ‘Bleu’ she was invited to feature her work in a gallery space, and so had to think about how she could interpret her images in a way that wasn’t just printing an image and putting it in a frame. This lecture really made me think how I could output my images in an unconventional way and present them to an audience using a method that perhaps enhances the narrative that my images are trying to tell.
“My practice considers the photograph as object and explores its potential for materiality, touch, and three-dimensionality; thus crossing and mixing the mediums of photography and sculpture. This is carried out through working with notions as the bodily and femininity. My experience of my own body and my perception of others’ is at the core of my practice. Intimate relations such as working with my mother or lover’s body are at the start of my enquiry.” https://www.rca.ac.uk/students/alix-marie/
Orlando, Alix Marie, 2014, Photographic Installation
Adrea, Alix Marie 2014, photography
13/11/19 - OUTPUT METHODS
Mat Collishaw
“Mat Collishaw (b. 1966) is a key figure in the important generation of British artists who emerged from Goldsmiths’ College in the late 1980s. He participated in Freeze (1988) and since his first solo exhibition in 1990 has exhibited widely internationally.”
I am inspired by the way in which Collishaw uses projection to present his work, he uses multiple screens in order to use the space as an element of narrative within his work.
Albion, 2017 - Aluminium, media player, Mirror, Paint, Scaffolding rig, Scretching accessories, Transparent mirror film, Video Projector, Wood
Retrospectre, 2010 - Glass, Hard Drive, Steel, Surveillance Mirror, Video Projector, Wood
Doug Aitken
Doug Aitken is an American multi-media artist. I am also inspired by the unconventional ways in which he outputs his photography and moving image work, using multiple screens in vast open spaces. I actually saw one of his pieces at the ‘Transformer’ exhibit at the Store X in London.
“His is a unique immersive aesthetic, characterised by a fascination with motion and velocity, that demonstrates the nature and structure of our media-saturated cultural condition. To this end, Aitken edits together frenetic and unique models of contemporary experience to create a new landscape, one in which he hopes we find points of anchor and experience a sense of connection. He employs a number of post-studio artistic mediums – photography, sculpture, architecture, sound installation, and multichannel video installation. In each of his artworks, he chooses the medium or combination that amplifies and visually articulates the subject's qualities. The scale of his work can vary from a simple photograph to a complex moving sculpture of infinitely reflective automated mirrors. Quasi-narrative films create intricate mazes of open-ended stories told across reinterpreted physical architecture.” – Biography from https://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/2-doug-aitken/
11/11/19 - FEMALE GAZE RESEARCH
These portraits from Cindy Sherman make me think of the extremes women go to, to satisfy the male gaze. I like how the images are shot, in a still portrait format with a bright colourful background and extreme hair, makeup and costuming.
Untitled # 360, 2000, Copyright Cindy Sherman Courtesy of the Artist, Sprüth Magers, and Metro Pictures
Untitled # 359, 2000, Copyright Cindy Sherman Courtesy of the Artist, Sprüth Magers, and Metro Pictures
Untitled 355, 2000, Copyright Cindy Sherman Courtesy of the Artist, Sprüth Magers, and Metro Pictures
These images from the ‘DRAG: Self Portraits and Body Politics’ Exhibition at the London Hayward Gallery in 2018 also demonstrate this sense of extreme femininity, pushing the boundaries of self-expression to the max.
“Shhh (from Patina du Prey Drag Pose Series)”, 1990/2012
“Cthulhu Through the Looking Glass”, 2017, Courtesy of Victoria Sin
Nadia Lee Cohen
Nadia Lee Cohen (born 1990) is a British art photographer, filmmaker and self-portrait artist. She is inspired by British and American cinema of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. I am really inspired by the way in which Cohen overexaggerates femininity. In her ‘Hello my name is…’ project, Cohen collects the name badges of people she meets in stores and drive-throughs and embodies them through self-portrait. Shot in a studio, the Cindy Sherman-esque series sees Cohen embody these people not just aesthetically, but in their very being; she thinks like them and collects their possessions too, exploring a sense of self.
https://www.dazeddigital.com/beauty/head/article/41795/1/nadia-lee-cohen-my-name-is
Martin Parr
Martin Parr (born 1952) is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life, in particular documenting the social classes of England, and more broadly the wealth of the Western world. I am inspired by Parr’s portrayal of glamourized yet everyday women at the sea-side, there is an over-saturated, over-exaggerated atmosphere to it which I love and which reminds me of the subjects within Sherman and Cohen’s work.
https://www.martinparr.com/archive/exhibitions/playas-brazil/
11/11/19 - PRIMARY RESEARCH AND THEORETICAL REFERENCE POINTS
10/11/19 - Catherine Opie, Tate Modern
Catherine Opie – ‘700 Nimes Road’ (2010-11)
At the Tate Modern on Sunday 10th November, I saw the Catherine Opie series; ‘700 Nimes Road’ in which she creates an intimate portrait of Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor by photographing the actor’s home and possessions. This body of work is very interesting to me, as through still life objects, Opie manages to communicate a real sense of Taylor is. It's fascinating how our sense of selves can be revealed through the objects and memorabilia that we collect throughout our lives.
10/11/19 - MOODBOARD
10/11/19 - RESEARCH
Arvida Byström
Arvida Byström (1991) is a Swedish artist, photographer and model who explores the idea of self, body and feminism within her work. “Although Byström is undoubtedly a reputable photographer — she’s shot for Wonderland, VICE and was featured in Petra Collins’ Babe — she’s perhaps as well known for her politics as for her art. […] From the visible menstruation in There Will Be Blood, to the sickly sweet candy-coloured photographs which take “femininity” and dial it up to the max, the messages in her images aren’t exactly subtle, or hard to decipher. Last year, the artist hit headlines after she received an unimaginable backlash — from hate to actual rape threats — for her choice to show leg-hair in an Adidas campaign, and took to Instagram to call out her haters. “I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to not possess all these privileges and try to exist in the world,” Byström wrote. “Me being such an abled, white, cis body with its only nonconforming feature being a lil leg hair.” https://www.sleek-mag.com/article/arvida-bystrom/
“Arvida Byström on why she implanted 30 NFC chips under her skin.” By Irina Baconsky, December 2018 - https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/42591/1/arvida-bystrom-implanted-30-nfc-chips-under-her-skin-inflated-fiction-exhibition
This article was incredibly interesting to me. It explains how in order to explore the way in which technology is increasingly intruding in our bodies, Byström had 30 NFC chips implanted under her skin, which when read by phones would show little pieces of text or images.
Cindy Sherman
“Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American artist whose work consists exclusively of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Her breakthrough work is often considered to be "Complete Untitled Film Stills," a series of 70 black-and-white photographs of herself in many of the roles of women in performance media (especially arthouse films and popular B-movies). In the 1980s, Sherman used colour film and large prints, and focused more on costume, lighting and facial expression.” https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/cindy-sherman-1938
Untitled Film Still no.16 (1978)
Untitled Film Still no.2 (1977)
Sherman’s work responds to the idea of the female gaze, as she portrays the roles of women in film and questions ideas of traditional beauty. She would often pose her heroines as alone, expressionless, and in private. A characteristic of her heroines was that they not follow conventional ideas of marriage and family. They were rebellious women who either died as that or who were later tamed by society.
Jenny Saville
“Jenny Saville is a contemporary British painter whose stylized nude portraits of voluminous female bodies have brought her international acclaim. Among her best-known works, is the large-scale self-portrait Branded (1992), in which the artist distorts her own torso and breasts through painting, making both body parts pendulous and imposing. Saville’s luscious yet grotesque treatment of painted bodies have elicited comparisons to Lucian Freud. “I paint flesh because I’m human,” she has said. “If you work in oil, as I do, it comes naturally. Flesh is just the most beautiful thing to paint.” Born on May 7, 1970, in Cambridge, United Kingdom, the artist studied at the Glasgow School of Art during the late 1980s. During her time at school, she was granted a six-month travel scholarship to the University of Cincinnati in the United States. It was while she was in America that Saville recounts seeing many overweight women and becoming interested in their bodies as subject matter.” http://www.artnet.com/artists/jenny-saville/
I feel that Saville’s use of viewpoint, composition and subject matter portray a unique look on nude bodies in artwork, straying from the traditional perfection of female bodies.
Branded. (1992)
Closed Contact. (2002)
Passage. (2004)