This is something i done after looking at the artist Marina abramovic....at this point i was still thinking about skin and marking. reason for the rope...but i realised it was more about the facial expressions now after doing this, it was a feeling of frustration i felt at this point or wanted to convey...pullng the ropes but never seeming to get anywhere. in it you can only see my gritted teeth, not the entire face...maybe i should try just showing the face but not the action for example holding something heavy or being shown something that you react to in some way, i dont know! im just thinking out loud! i only put one up because i feel it was an in between stage to get at something...and i think this one best showed what i was trying to get at.

i havent wrote anything on this for nearly a week...i have came close many times but could never get my brain to think enough to form somesort of coherent sentence. But here i am now.

For the first half of this week i had been stuttering through my work...I had looked at many artists but was unsure of what to do next. One of the artists i had looked at was marina abramovic...the link is to a page with a preview of her performance "art must be beautiful, artist must be beautiful"...which the still below is from. In the performance she is aggressively brushing her hair with a comb and a brush, continuely saying "art must be beautiful, artist must be beautiful". On the link it explains what the piece is about - "it is not about physical pain, but rather about the mental state that can be reached by way of pain." Watching this it is her facial expressions that interest me, going from almost staring into space to the brow creasing when pain is felt.

my grotesque yet

my most recent attempt at this and apparently, it seems, my most horrible, the skin really looks so distorted with the bulges of skin.






after tape off. looks really marked, even scar like..not gonna be able to write more on here until probably sunday....there is some stuff i want to talk about in relation to the work i have been doing and identity and some other stuff but for the moment i do not have time, i just wanted to get this work up as it was the most important at the moment.

another taping..

Second try at taping...its strange how many people find it disgusting just because the way the skin looks....its only been taped and pulled in places...its strange how people respond so badly to it?





love this gouge out look, mad!


skin once the tape has been taken off...looks quite severe.

i do have more photos....just too many to put on here. i will put them on flickr as soon as i can.

Selotape me!

Image from my first taping....going to try some more.

more! more!

Also found a book called "future face" image, identity, innovation. It is a collective of many artist with work involving the face. Really liked the Douglas Gordon piece featured -monster....using selotape to distort the face. I seem to be intersted in the skin again, embossing and such...would really like to use selotape to distort skin, i want to do something that is still about the skin but not embossing words...i still really like that though.



monster I


Here is another piece by Douglas which envolves words and his arm....thought i would put this in since i was embossing words on my arm....


never, never (black negative, mirrored) 2000

looking for artists...

Went looking for some books the other day on identity...found a few artists, one being this - richard renaldi - he went across america photographing just ordindary people, thought it might be interesting....



christine, fresno, california, 2003


there is more stuff on his website if you wish to have a look

richard renaldi

PVA glue over embossing

embossing galore!

Some more embossing i decided to do.....who am i?

Found this - randomness - could be fun to try

identity chart

hmmm?

I feel before i go any further, in any direction this project will take me, i must first talk a little about identity and the area of it that i am looking at, at this moment in time. For me at the moment i seem to be looking at personal identity rather than social or political. It interests me more just now, simple as that.

When we talk of personal identity, we are talking about what makes us who we are and the problems we have with this. Who am i? Why am i here? Our need to know what our purpose is. It's this need to confirm who we are , to feel connected to something. What would we be without some sort of identity, something to make us feel alive? I think im talking rubbish because im still trying to figure this all out in my head??? Well here is one of the websites ive looked at trying to figure this jumble in my head and get some answers....

personal identity

Photos!

I finally got some photos up woo hoo!

alot of my stuff is on flickr, here is the link to have a wee gander at...feel free to add me


my flickr!

catherine Balet - identity

Happened to start looking at books in Waterstones and found one by Catherine Balet, surprisingly enough entitled "identity". It was a series of photographs of teenagers in their school uniforms, whether in actual uniform or their own clothes, looking at London, paris, Milan and Berlin. What caught my eye were the photos she had took which focused on their shoes. I thought this would be an interesting thing to try out myself as there is alot you can tell or maybe assume about a person just by looking at certain type of clothing they wear, especially their shoes. I wish to take photographs of peoples shoes (while they are in them of course), giving no information along with the photos about the person, i wish for people to form their own opinion about the person and possible leave their comments on this page or i may just ask people.

At the moment i am following this idea because it interests me, dont know where its going, dont even know if i explain it well but oh well....

heres a webpage about the artist, doesnt say much but there is a link on the right that takes you to a page that will actually explain better what her photographs are about????

catherine balet

term 3 project?

So my idea for this project is still a bit fuzzy or maybe its just the time of night. The last project left me thinking about our own personal views of ourselves and how these can be manipulated by the media. I now want to take this to perhaps a more personal level and start looking at identity, whether this is in general looking at the idea of identity and what that means in society or perhaps going on to looking at my own personal identity is something that will progress through investigation. I have other ideas of looking even at identity theft as research, the act of actually stealing someones identity, what does that mean, where could i go with that? well for the moment i shall go and think...

Oh decisions!

* I did have something all written out but due to my utter stupidness it went bye bye so I have to write it all out again when I cant remember it all *slaps head*

Right well I have had much thought over this project, most of it leading nowhere. I have been trying to decide where I should go with this new project, should I pick something completely new, just pick an object and start a fresh? But I can’t seem to get my mind off the last project we done and how I felt there was still much I wanted to do. For me I felt that project was unfinished and had wanted to continue with it.

My last project had focused on the feminine ideal in the media, where it focused on the projection of certain types of female image onto society. It began with looking at the image but then progressed to looking more at text and as a piece of work I projected certain words across myself. This then led into the last piece of work I done which was embossing words onto my skin * I liked the use of embossing on the skin, I felt this was a more personal and extreme way to show the effect of words on the mind and body. I find it interesting the reaction the skin has to the harshness of embossing (the redness of the skin, the harsh markings like a brand). I am interested in embossing and would like to use it again in my following project, maybe developing this approach further*

embossing photos