Assessment Day. 'Not Me, But Me'

Assessment day set up.

Projector and Mixed Media on Paper, 

Digital Collages on A2 paper with lighting. 

Folio Two Artist Statement

Not me, But me is a series of digital media and mixed media on paper with projection. It is a collection of distorted, merged and beautifully haunting self-portraits that interrogates aspects of difference, repetition, and the invisibility of chronic illnesses.

Not me, But me explores the medicalisation of the self-image by comparing the act of drawing and the trace as mark to the medical imaging of the body and the trace that is left behind. A concept that Petherbridge talks about in The Primacy of Drawing. This is particularly evident in the large self-portrait that is made from mixed media (pastels, watercolours, prismacolour pencil, charcoals etc) and then stitched together. The merging of the medical imaging upon the outside of my body shows the invisible illnesses as visible in an attempt to document and illustrate my daily human experience. The stitching of the large work emphasises that traces of these surgeries, tests and scans are left behind, they are never truly gone. Once somethings is taken apart, it can never perfectly be put back together.

I have expanded upon my digital collage experiments from my first proposal and have created secondary collages from them. These collages explore my invention of the new normal, a concept I created in my first proposal. My ‘Normal’ is constantly evolving. An altered space of the everyday. This is expressed within each collage. There are so many ways my everyday space can be changed. 

I am currently studying Renaissance art and am drawn to the self-portraits of the master artists. From the idealised proportions to the soft colour palettes to the posing of the model. Not me, But me reflects my immersion into this research through the lens of self-portraiture. This has culminated in a collision of the romanticised notion of the Renaissance portrait and the invasion of medical imaging and surgeries upon the body. Idealised proportions and posing versus the reality of the human experience. The result of this collision is a series of obstructive selfies, anti-selfies, expressing human vulnerability and the decay of the body.

The artists that I have been looking at include; Ellie Kammer, Jenny Saville, Mike Parr, Jesse Draxler, and Renaissance artists like Albrecht Durer, Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo. Mike Parr’s work is particularly relevant to my work and concept. The importance of the self-portrait and the disembodied human head, not showing the body that it is attached too.

On Parr’s work Graham Coulter-Smith and Jane Magon write the following:

Parr is embarked upon a search for something which can never be found, a self which is inherently lost. Our being, Being in general, is lost - that's why we are so obsessed with finding it. The human irony is that we are strongly motivated by a quest for identity, but our very mode of seeking prevents us from ever finding it. We seek ourselves via self-representation, but the very act of re-presentation is the antithesis of that self-presence we hunger for. Each act of self-representation is a disappointment because it can only ever produce a trace, a burnt out replica of that self presence we desire.

…charcoal drawings, with their physical record of the artist's hand, evoke the theological ideal of the artist's presence…the traditional aesthetics of presence.

This is particularly relevant to my work. I am drawn to the medium of self-portraiture as a way to re insert myself back into the world.  To discover my own identity and document my daily experience. Even though the outcome can never fully be truthful to what others see, I continue to find new ways of representing myself.

While my concept has remained the same since my proposal, the finished series took a different direction in execution. I ended up expanding upon the digital collage experiments and creating secondary works from them. For this series, installation is about lighting and projection. The larger work has been created with projection in mind. While the other collages were created to be displayed alone. In an ideal world, I would have individual lights on each collage, to better show the projection.

For future works, I can see myself continuing with larger scale portraits.

WIP - Final

The last full shot of the completed self portrait before I sewed the pieces together. 

The pieces of paper are huge! It took two people to sew it together. 

Drawing Title Ideas

Ideas for titles for my folio two project. In the end I went for 'Not Me, But Me'.

Renaissance Self Portraits

Notes on the collision of the Renaissance portrait and my work

I am drawn to Renaissance portraits, particularly self portraits and have been studying Renaissance art this semester.  The idealised proportions, soft colour palettes, the posing of the model.
Romanticised self portraits versus the human body and the invasion of surgeries/medications/tests upon the body. 

My work touches on:
*Human vulnerability and the decay of the body
*Fantastical/idealised proportions versus the reality of the human experience
*Soft colours
*How I view myself through the lens of medicalisation


I particularly like the work of Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Durer. 

No single man can be taken as a model for a perfect figure, for no man lives on earth who is endowed with the whole of beauty. - Albrecht Durer

Albrecht Durer, Self Portrait, 1500.

Albrecht Durer, Self Portrait, 1484.

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, c. 1503-16.

Final Collages

These are the final digital collages that I printed through Live Image onto A2 matte paper. I have adjusted the contrast, saturation and colours. 

Work in Progress #2

I have cancelled all plans for the next week, and given away some work shifts. Now to bunker down and finish this! Still sitting in my little corner at home. 

Work in Progress #1

Update on my current drawing progress for the larger self portrait. I have currently taken over the dining room table at home. 

The work got too big to do on the table. I have migrated to the floor....with cushions. 

Cherry Hood

Cherry Hood is an Australian Artist that creates portraits. Her thesis investigated gender politics in art and cultural mores and taboos surrounding the representation of the male body. Her portraits are quite beautiful but also very sad. 

The drips are Hood's way out: she relies on these chaotic elements to turn her illustrations into contemporary art. Standing before her wraithlike, equivocal pictures, you have to decide whether or not to give her the benefit of the drip.

Cherry Hood, How Do We Decide

Cherry Hood, Mark

Work in Progress - Test in Class

Test in class of each section altogether. My apartment doesn't have the space to work on it altogether on the wall. So this is one of the first times I have seen it together!

Mike Parr

I have now reached the point where large drawings on paper are being produced in tandem with large drypoints and etchings. Energy and ideas are continually flowing between one medium and the other. Across the paper I work at great speed, which facilitates a particular kind of resolution as well as a particular kind of content.

Drypoints are made directly onto metal plates with a carborundum-tipped stylus or a diamond point for fine work. The line cut into the copper raises a burr and it is the burr (rather than the groove, as in etching) that carries the ink. I also use other tools such as an angle grinder, sandpaper, nails and old wood chisels for cutting and scumbling the surface of the metal plate.

In contrast to the mobility of the work on paper, copper or zinc plates are a mass of resistance. The key, though, is to understand how this extreme contrast facilitates my work, because I find the difficulty of ‘seeing’ the image to be particularly stimulating, as accurate contours in the mind are defeated by the process of drypoint drawing. Lines continually skid into one another, agglutinate and form patches of graphic turbulence and the surface becomes greasy, opaque. The sheer physicality of the process and the characteristic ‘damage’ of the drypoint lines and, in the large works, the overdrawing across images and plates, are also all in direct contrast to work on paper. It is as though at every instant I am breaking down my facility as a draftsman.

What I am really talking about is the meaning of difficulty, how images are formed, what is left out in the process and how ‘skill’ glosses over or conceals the artist’s understanding of his own work.

Mike Parr, 1990.

Mike Parr, Language and Choas I, 1989-90

 

Mike Parr, Part of: 12 Untitled self portraits (Set 1), 1989

On Parr’s work Graham Coulter-Smith and Jane Magon write the following:

Parr is embarked upon a search for something which can never be found, a self which is inherently lost. Our being, Being in general, is lost - that's why we are so obsessed with finding it. The human irony is that we are strongly motivated by a quest for identity, but our very mode of seeking prevents us from ever finding it. We seek ourselves via self-representation, but the very act of re-presentation is the antithesis of that self-presence we hunger for. Each act of self-representation is a disappointment because it can only ever produce a trace, a burnt out replica of that self presence we desire.

…charcoal drawings, with their physical record of the artist's hand, evoke the theological ideal of the artist's presence…the traditional aesthetics of presence. 

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~robert2600/mparr.html

Sewing Tests

The sewing machine experiments were easy to do. I thought the paper would be too thick, but it went through quite easily. I like the mismatched nature of the image once it it stitched back together. It illustrates the concept that surgeries never perfectly put the body back together. 

Hand sewn experiments did not quite work out. They are very messy and time consuming. 

Experimental Printer Test #2

I booked the experimental printer this week and, with Conchita's help, printed off some digital collages onto different materials. The first one is on cotton and linen, the second print is curtain lining and the last one is on cartridge paper. 

Unfortunately, the ones on material did not work out as well as I'd hoped. You have to pull it through in a certain way; if the material is too slack the printer gets caught on it and you get big ink blotches, or if you pull it through too fast, you get white lines because the material has gone through too fast. 

The paper experiment was the most successful, so I will be printing these collages out at Live Image for my second folio project. 

Red Green Blue

Red Green Blue

A History of Australian Video Art

Justine Cooper, Rapt, 1968

Justine Cooper works at the intersection of culture, science and medicine. Her practice incorporates animation, video, installation, photography, as well as medical imaging technologies as MRI, DNA sequencing, ultrasound and SEM. Through her work, Cooper reminds us that science and art are equally concerned with revealing hidden realities. 

Her work is relevant to mine. Through medical imaging and art, we both explore the human body and personal identities. 

Little Drawing/Collage Test

Thought I'd try doing a small scale collage drawing with my digital collages, in preparation for my large work. 

Collages #2

Working on some more collages.....