Time for an Update…

Hey guys! Sorry about the long delay between posts; it’s been a busy couple of weeks!

Here’s some images of my latest works ….

So here’s my second in the censorship series; it kind of relates mostly to my dislike towards the over population of landscapes, and the view that they’re “real” art – especially in the small town with surrounding farm area I live in. I wanted to give it an anonymous, otherwordly landscape feel, and having the ‘fuck’ hidden in the spaces of landscape area.

 

 

This is the third in the series of progress works; this time I was looking at the dissecting of the font itself, and putting it into an environment where the word itself becomes less noticeable. This was from an initial pencil drawing playing around with the word ‘fuck’ in text, and I segmented that apart and played around with some angular shapes to disguise the text.

I also found that a somewhat limited colour palette works much better, at least for myself; I can tend to go over top with too many colours which can mess with the overall look that I’m trying to achieve.

 

The first three works pictured together — I’m pretty happy how they look together, as well as individually.

 

This is the latest I’ve been working on — “Where do you go after…”.

I’d really like to know people’s thoughts on this one before I go into detail about it!

xx

 

c*nt

 

So, here it is … the first of my works centering around censorship and political correctness. Read back on my past posts for a bit more detail regarding this. I’d love to hear your feedback! xx

A small follow up

Okay. So I was thinking about the post I put up last night, and I’m starting to think that the issue of censorship is primarily where I am headed. 

On that note, I think I quite like the idea of moving into to phrases and sentences, rather than my initial idea of a single word without context. Things like “what the fuck?” and “who the fuck do you think you are”, etc – that directly poses a question of idea of the viewer. Hopefully in doing this, they’re still question the offensive nature of the words (I plan on keeping the bright, bubblegummy imagery), but also the intent, and whether it should be censored or not.

We all have a different idea of censorship; whether society has taken it too far, or not far enough. I personally think that ‘the powers that be’ have taken censorship in a far too heavy direction; and this is what I’m hoping to put out there by putting such statements in such an obvious, viewable way.

On a slight tangent, we also discussed the idea of doing some ceramic plate painting next week in class – I quite like the idea of putting these (normally) offensive statements and words on something as mundane as a dinnerset. It’s something used and seen daily; the wee ideas that have started to bubble from this are kind of catching my interest. I quite like the idea of putting something that we’re supposed to censor and keep ‘hidden’, instead being out there, on a regularly used, usually mundane item is something that really intrigues me.

Anyone have any thoughts regarding censorship? Let me know your thoughts!

late night musings

So, around the topic of my ‘swear word’ imagery, my initial reaction was one of not wanting to offend; I wanted to approach the subject matter in a way that is initially visually approachable. I still want to do this, but I’m starting to wonder if perhaps the aim behind the idea is shifting a little. 

Initially, I wanted to ‘pull down’ people’s initial reactions to the words; if the context is inoffensive, then what is it about the word that is offensive? Now I’m starting to wonder if perhaps I’m leaning a little towards the issue of censorship – the mass media approach of ‘softening’ or ‘dumbing down’ of everything, and are we being told the full story? This is something that is literally just coming to mind as I type; I’m still trying to wrap my head around what it is that I’m actually trying to articulate here. 

Censorship is something I think we can all relate to as artists (or aspiring artists); the machine behind the industry oppressing and pushing back those of us that are perhaps trying to say something in a less than digestible format. I’m not suggesting what I’m trying to do is new, or breaking any boundaries here – are there any left to even break, that’s a whole other can of worms – but it’s an approach that is probably not as easily accepted as, say, a complete abstract, or a landscape.

On the flip side of that coin, it’s something that could perhaps become inherently ‘marketable’. I don’t view this as necessarily a bad thing – we all have to eat, right? And at the end of the day, most of us want to be able to do that without having to supplement our income by other means. 

The marketability of something so polarizing – people are either going to like it or not – is a funny thing; the risk of it failing, and putting it out there in the first place is what I think makes it marketable at all. But that’s another tangent for a later date.

The irony of marketing something about censorship is not a new one – prime example being the overabundance of Che Guevara’s iconic image splashed across t-shirts, etc. Irony is something I’ve always enjoyed, whether it’s obvious irony and satire or less so.

Censorship is something I feel like I’ve been struggling with lately – who decides what is okay? What do we censor? Why? This is something we hit on lightly today with our tutor, regarding Michel Foucault’s writings about the difference between the ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ is purely our own deciding. It’s a funny thing; and I feel maybe a wee bit disillusioned with the whole thing (along with a whole lot of other things, but that’s another story).

I’m not sure I’m tying up any loose ends here, but I kind of needed to get that out of my head – at least to kind of get my head around what it is I’m really trying to say.

Til next time xx