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Free Writing on my development this year

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Free Writing on my development this year

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My development over this year has been unbelievable. The definition of art has completely shifted for me. I have learned that art is so much more than works displayed in a gallery. Our works can be made for outside the gallery and we ourselves can take our work to the public relm whenever we want to. You can walk outside make stickers with a message you want out there, you can take a tree and hang your art, you can perform in the street and explore your ideas through the publics reaction.

Over the summer I am planning on working on a few short films because this year I learned that you don't have to fit a certain criteria to make art and the best time to make art is simply now.

I came into college with a solid grasp that I wanted to focus my art on, the body and politics. I wanted to learn how to paint better and draw better. This changed radically. I found so much passion for sculpture. I based my whole photography project around landscapes. I explored the idea of subcultures within social media and spent much of my time educating myself on online formats.

Covid had a massive impact on my art. I had nobody to photograph because of restrictions and had to focus a lot of art around myself and my own body. I had to focus on my everyday life rather than constantly looking outwards for the cries of others. This was really interesting and I will of course continue to look to others for inspiration, I think it was important I got to spend time with myself and make personal art.

This year I definetly took a new direction in my own personal life. Covid forced me inside and my dad got covid forcing me to isolate for 3 weeks. During this time I found a new TV show and became completely enthralled in fandom culture and online cultural wars. I was reminded of my love for film and TV media as well as comic books and fan written works. This helped me visit ideas of illustration that I never had felt the need to explore before and I created an illustration piece on Covid-19 and how our fears have changed. It was based off my love for comics and horror. I created a lof of fan works for my favourite shows. My new love for media even taught me how to critically anaylse tv and film better and I now have a better understanding of representation within in these medias and when they are good and bad. This definetly will aid me in the future for when I create works that include minorities.

Fandom culture also led me down a rabit hole of ideas around parasocial relationships, subcultures and the formats of online spaces we spend time on. I began comparing how different social media platforms viewed different media, it is so fascinating how opinions differ and how the cultures differ simply on different sites. I read a book called 'Kill All Normies' that explored how reddit and 4 chan culture fuel the alt right and how tumblr and twitter fueled the far left and how the differnt sites users were at war with each other and still are. I am excited to get more time to explore this in the future as I don't see many artists talking about these fascinating subjetcs.

I am excited to finish up this year, simply because I am burnt the hell out but also I now have time to work on the projects I have planned for the summer. My best friend is an actor and we are going to explore the format of film making. Hopefully next year holds a less virtual year and we can all spend more time in the studio and within reality, I know I certainly need that. I am proud of how my ideas have developed and I am glad I found so many inspiring artists this year who changed my definitio of art. I am excited to continue exploring new forms of practice within art and am defintely more open minded and confident in just saying fuck it and learning new things even if I am bad at the beginning. Art is about trial and error and exploring.

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I decided to work on a painting of dorian electra to combat the ideals of nude figures painted within a small section of beauty standards. I took direct inspiration from Saville's ground breaking piece 'Passage' and how it depicts a trans woman within a nude portrait.

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After looking at Tania Brughera, Ana Mendieta and David Hammons I decided to make a work from my own experience of gender identity.

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Body Tracks (Rastros Corporales), 1982, Blood and tempera on paper

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Body Tracks (Rastros Corporales), 1982, Blood and tempera on paper

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These works spoke to me so much because of the interesting indenetations of the body on paper. You can seriously feel the pain from them and they are so powerful.

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I looked at  David Hammons: Body Prints, 1968–1979, this series beings together the monoprints and collages in which the artist used the body as both a drawing tool and printing plate to explore performative, unconventional forms of image making.

These images talk about how Hammons wants to reinterpret notions of the real; his celebration of the sacredness of objects touched or made by the Black body; his biting critique of racial oppression; and his deep commitment to social justice.

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Black Boy’s Window, 1968. Silkscreen on glass

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Black Boy’s Window, 1968. Silkscreen on glass

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Untitled, 1969, Grease and Pigment on Paper

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Untitled, 1969, Grease and Pigment on Paper

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Body Tracks (Rastros Corporales), 1982, Blood and tempera on paper

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Body Tracks (Rastros Corporales), 1982, Blood and tempera on paper

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Mendieta’s performance entitled Body Tracks (Rastros Corporales) took place on the evening of 8 April 1982, in an intimate performance space known as Franklin Furnace in New York City.

Drawing from the Afro-Cuban religion Santería, Mendieta uses animal blood and tempera paint to create imprints of her hands on white paper. She repeats this ritualistic gesture in silence throughout the performance, forming variations of her silhouette. Mendieta exits the gallery space, leaving behind her body prints for the audience to bare witness to the red markings in her absence. Together these acts can be interpreted as Mendieta’s political stance against violence inflicted upon women.

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Untitled, 1975, Grease and pigment on paper

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Untitled, 1975, Grease and pigment on paper

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Everything about me is a minority. This is perfect for an artist - 1989

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Everything about me is a minority. This is perfect for an artist - 1989

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Lee Bul experimented with works about gender and how it defines so many of us.

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I looked into Lee Bul's Performace pieces and how she uses her body to create my next short photography series.

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Lee Bul is an a South Korean contemporary sculpture and installation artist. She focuses on bring nightmares to life to articulate complicated ideas such as patriarchy, gender politics andcultural and Political Spheres.

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Sorry for Suffering- You Think Think I'm A Puppy On a Picnic? , 1990

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Sorry for Suffering- You Think Think I'm A Puppy On a Picnic? , 1990

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Here we seen Lee Bul step out in public wearing a giant costume, all flapping limbs and protrusions. This spectacle was drawn from nightmares, and there is something seriously vulnerable about this piece too.

Lee Bul talks about the objectication of women and marginalisation that occurs foe them through her performace works. She uses her body and her sculpture making sjills to assembl these great pieces.

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I decided to take pictures of myself foe the photoshop task. I took images of myself of how I percieve mysef, how it feels to look in the mirror and how I feel trying to live up to body standards.

They are set in my natural enviroment of my messy bedroom and I think that adds n intimate touch to them. You are seeing me experience my own body within my own space.

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I collected all my broken pieces to create this piece. The pieces are like a puzzel displayed on a living growing piece of nature. The fagments of life caught among the growth of a perseon. Each fagment when put together puts together a camera mould like how every experience we have puts us together.

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Me breaking apart mould the like . puzzel pieces

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For this piece I used a window I had lying around after I had some construction work done. I decided I wanted to work on a window. The point of this piece is it is supposed to be moved and we look through the window and experience a trans persepective.

My identity has always lied on the andrognous spectrum. Growing up I was assigned female and was forced hard into female beauty standards. When I cut my hair at 12 I was asked if I didn't want men to find me attractive. When I fought against beauty standards from a young age and only wore boys clothes I was told by the time I was 16 I would be wearing dresses and love makeup. All of this confused me and it really caused a lot of tourmoil. Being told by the time I was 16 I would simply grow into the slim beauty standard gave me a false hope and when I hit puberty and started experiencing severe gender dysphoria I was confused. I was supposed to want to grow up and be a woman? All these things I was told simply did not happen and living in my body and experiencing life everyday became a hell for me.

At 13 I came out as trans and exclusively lived my life outside of school and family as a boy. I was called sir and fully passed as a boy. This went on up until I was 17. The role of a man fit me much better but I learned so much about gender expectations for men. I felt so forced into so many "manly" gender roles. Yes, being a man fit me better but it came with toxic masculinity and a need to prove I was in fact a man. I spent a lot of my time performing a masculinity that simply was not me and I developed an eating disorder and all I thought about was how I experienced my body and how other percieved me.

At 17 I decided to say fuck it to gender standards. I began presenting myself how I wanted. I still experience gender dysphoria in my everyday life but proving my masculinity to people was simply too much for me and I am much happier living as me, not as a gender role, masculine or feminine.

This piece is about gender roles that have been forced on me throughout my life. It is expressed through the colours and the handprints are grives of frustration and about the different masks I put on to fit other's ideas of gender.

Unfortunately for this piece I could not transport it to differnt places and take pictures through it because I only had myself at home this week, but hopefully in the future I can display it in different places and people can see through my eyes through this piece.

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Almeida uses herself as a model often but does not that her works are self portraits, rather she uses herself as an object as seen below in 'Inhabited Drawing'.

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This is a chromogenic print with red paint on it. I enjoy the playfulness of the image as well asthe comentary on female beauty standards. The red substance which I assume is supposed to mimic blood leaks out of a shoe, this articulates not only the pain of high heals but the pain of being beautiful and follwoing beauty standards for society.

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Almeida created a series in 1967 of various shots of herself with blue paint painted on.

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Desenho Habitado [Inhabited Drawing], 1975

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Desenho Habitado [Inhabited Drawing], 1975

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Notes and reactions to Works presented

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I decided for my final image to create a background through images I took and made the bacground transparent. I then took an image of myself and cut it out of the original image and placed it in.

Since I was working on the idea of gender and body I created a personal creative compistionof what it feels like trying to live up to the unrealistic body standards of the media.

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I like to use colours as a way to create disscourse about gender. Using colour I think is a super interesting way to articulate things.

Here is my work 'Skin Standards' that is a self portrait that talks about harsh gender and beauty standards that have been places on me. I articulate this through colour.

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Oil on Canvas

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Oil on Canvas

Ancestors references traditional art history again. Here we see a man and a woman sitting naked with their legs intertwined,

Saville began creating works by not knowing what they are going to be, she simply begins in the middle of the canvas and paints.

Saville’s use of colours is so bold and vivid, once again her application of paint is thick and she creates abstraction with this. The energy of the bodies has been enhanced by the colours.

Saville focuses on the mutability of human behavior in a modern world

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Saville even went to morgues to study the flesh on people. In this study you can see her focus on the decomposition of flesh.

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Charcoal and Pastel on Canvas

Saville has become more experimental with her recent works, experimenting with painting and drawing outside the lines and using bolder colours.

Saville began creating work with traditional poses from academic art and putting them on their head with abstraction.

Here we see people lying on their sides, it is hard to decipher how may people are there because of the abstract style.

Saville explore the idea of multiple realities that technology and social media has left us with.

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Oil on Canvas

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Oil on Paper laid on Board

Savile became more comfortable creating works that contained beauty in them instead of focusing on disturbing imagery

Here is a painting that Saville painted while in Naples. She was working with a blind woman named Rosetta and saw so much beauty in her despite the woman’s self hatred for herself.

Here we see a close up portrait of Rosetta.

The paint is thickly applied and the colours are cool and beautiful. Her flesh has darker colours in it and reveals the darkness underneath her skin.

Saville explores the idea of beauty in places that society wouldn’t deem the usual conceptions of beauty.

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Four Chromogenic Prints, Flush Mounted on Board

This is Saville’s collaborative project with Glenn Luchford.

These are photographs of Saville’s body pressured against glass.

The images portrayed were inspired by Saville’s time observing plastic surgery in 1994.

These images reveal grotesque colours and weird compositions of skin pushed against glass.

We can see Saville’s obsession with flesh throughout these photos.

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Oil on Canvas

This is a large scale work.

This painting focuses on reds and browns rather than Saville’s fair skin tone with thickly applied paint. This is to reveal what is underneath flesh.

Saville uses this image as a way to express that not everything has to be beautiful to be painted.

Saville focuses on the flaws in this painting and focuses on the female gaze rather than the historical male gaze.

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Saville went to America during the 90s and came across women of large size. She decided to depict these inlarge scale paints. These paintings have lots of power.

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Oil on Canvas

Jenny Saville had an obsession weith plastic surgery and even attended surgeries to study flesh better for her paintings. Here we have a woman with lines all over her to articulate th e process of cosmetic surgery.

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Oil on Canvas

This is one of Saville’s early works.

This painting depicts herself. Saville often uses body as the subject of her works.

Saville focuses on the human body and challenges the societal standards set around not only female bodies but the history of female bodies depicted in art itself. This painting also focuses on body image itself and how we view our own bodies.

Saville focuses on flesh, in her paintings. She applies paint thickly to create the wonderful affect on the skin in her works.

The composition is powerful as we are viewing her from an upwards angle while the figure balances on a small stool This composition almost makes you feel uneasy.

In Saville’s early works she focused on images that invoke discomfort. The background reflects the colours in the flesh yet feels cold while the body has a warm hue to it articulating the warmth of skin.

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For this piece I used my body after looking at how other artists used their body to articulate the idea of gender and body standards.

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I decided to look at the idea of the body. Since I already looked into trans issues I thought I could continue to look at represenation in the bodies.

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Here is my first attemp at photoshop. I made several layers through this piece and learned how to draw shapes and use different tools like fill and paint.

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I was looking at public art when I noticed Trans Power spray painted in different parts of Dublin.

As a trans person this was very inspiring to see. I think making media that can make trans people visible in a positive manner can help people understnad that trans people exist and are humans just like anyone else. Trans people deserve good health care and to be accepted withing society.

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It is important we make trans people and trans health care visbile as it reoves stigma from trans people and saves their lives!!!

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Disclosure talks about the misrepresentation of trans people as well as the invisibility of them. Trans women are portrayed as woman eating serial killers and well trans men are non existent in the media.

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When we are talking about inverting power I think for queer related topics representation is the key. Dorian Electra's playboy photoshoot is a perfect example of a trans body being shown in a wondeful light. The media has dragged trans people in the mud and there is so much stigma around trans bodies. Having a simple tastefully shot photoshoots helps portray trans bodies as beautiful.

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Here I took a photo of my own body, not only to show my own trans body but articulate the diversity in bodies and make trans body seen.

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Basically whenever I ask a cisgender person(someone who is not trans) if they know anything about trans healthcare they usually shake their head. Trans people are visible but their struggles really are not. The difficulty of transition is NEVER articulated in the media. In Ireland publically we have one gender clinic, you must be referred by a doctor and sometimes the doctor won't even believe you so you have to PAY for a psychiatrist or else wait for one publically. Then you have the list, the Goddamn list.. This list lasts 2-3 years usually then you can finally get a psych evaluation where you are poked and proded. After that you usually have to wait 6 months before you start horomones. Then for trans men top surgery usually comes but here is the best part. Ireland no longer has a top surgeon. Now we must pay and travel abroard for this service and with brexit the UK is no longer really an option. Now of course there is always private health care but as a trans person a lot of the time horomones isn't covered and if you are young and have an unsupportive family... you are left with the flimsy public system.

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These photos articulate gender dysphoria and why it is so important that trans people get treated with life saving treatment.

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For me growing up as a trans person, transpeople were invisible or teriibly represented in the media. I knew nothing about trans healthcare for my transition and without trans activists I have no idea where I would be. Trans health care saves so many people's lives and I believe that it needs a light shun on it. Fourty percent of trans people have attemped suicide at on point in their lifetime and I bet it would be much high without this life saving healthcare.

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For my Unseen Heroes I decided to focuson trans health care as well as trans activists

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I transferred the image onto the wall in the corner and began to stick pins along the lines. After this I took My string and began to draw with it and create a 3D installation.

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I drew a 5 minute sketch from my primary photo before transferring the sketch onto the wall.

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Here are my photos of my glasses taken on a white backdrop. I experimented with different angles and close up and far away shots, as well as focus and unfocused shots.

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Here is pictures I took of my glasses. I took them in different plsaes of my home and differnt places in my studio

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Here I placed my Ferris wheel on a white backdrop. I took close ups, far shots and focused and out of focused my shots.

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I took shots of the Ferris Wheel within my studio, I took them from a variety of angles and and continous shots as I panned the object

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I then went outside and took images of a building I liked. I focused on the stain glass windows.

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Here I took photos of all my objects together. I focused on differnt points and did experimental compositions

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Here I took more photos but included close ups and on a white backdrop. I took more experiemental shots for this work.

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Here is the script we created. We each wrote words for our objects and read them out while others did actions and made noises

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The research I have done can help me develop artworks by trying out these ways. For example I could sketch stories and experiment with narratives and paste different narratives together like Kentridge. I could try largescale drawings like both the artists. I coule even try Kentridge's technique of erasing and redrawing for animations.

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Kentridge often uses charcoal and pastels in his works and as you can see from the ones I examined they are what he used. Kentridge loves to explore narritives in his work and he explores this through drawing. As we can see in Kentridge's 'Drawing For Projection' series, he used erasing and redrawing a lot. Kentridge then likes to mismatch narratives as seen in 'Arc/Procession: Develop Catch Up, Even Surpass'. Kentridge takes all different protesters and pastes them together. For the research Kentridge drew different figures then when he was done he stuck them together to create an amazing largescale artwork.

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(there was only one artist work in push comes to shove so I only got one work done)

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Kara Walker uses drawing as a research. She creates her works by drawing illustrations and creating narritives. After Walker is done developing her ideas with sketches she moves onto large scale paper. She uses white chalk to draw her figures and then carefully cuts them out to create her work.

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Making Western Flag | John Gerrard On His Artwork For Earth Day

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This is a largescale installation placed outside Somerset House, London. This was broadcasted for a day on World Earthday. Gerrard uses hyper realistic graphics to portray the dangers of climate change though a dark image of a flag emitting smoke.

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John Gerrard is an Irish contemerary artist, often known for his simulated works. He talks about the age of the internet in his works as well as its enviromental impacts.

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This installation piece consists of 36 wire mesh compartmenmts, an electric motor and a lightbulb. Here we can see Hantoum explore space and light. She uses light to create shadow and geometric shapes. This work has a confined feeling and a lot of people believed it was a comment on Palestinian refugee camps. This work was just meant to make a beautiful visual display of ambiguity.

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Hot Spot is a stainless steel and neon tube piece about how the world is constandly in conflict. The sculpture is a globe with geometric shapes and highlighted red neon tubes. The red neon tubes convey the conflict in the world.

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Mona Hantoum is a Palestinian artist who is located in London. Her work talks about the hypocriscy of the world. She often talks about race, gender and politics.