City Centre Ruins – 2018

2018… (A cynical person’s view of the aftermath of 2017)

My entry to the Ferens Open Exhibition 2015. The title of the image is 2018, i.e. year after the city of culture. This photo reflects the views of the cynics and the haters. Hull as a post apocliptic waste land after all the glitz, glamour and money has gone…. Not that I think this will be the case at all.

The image is created with own images and 4 copy right free source images. By creating the landscape with real everyday images I think it creates a certain believable realise that drawings and paintings might not have.

Taking around 30 hours the images where placed and manpulated using photoshop and a LOT of groups and layers.

A2 Print

Within my photography I like to create surreal, odd, magical scenes with locations that people still recognise. My main drive for doing this comes from often I hearing that Hull is boring or uninspiring and dull and I guess within my work I’d like to prove the bored, uninspired haters wrong.

(And also I absolutely love creating my own manipulated realties).

 

 I think the themes of this work could both fit in with the everyday and also gothic.

Everyday = Using everyday images to create a work.

Gothic = Decay, dread, ruins melodrama & mistrust.

 

 

David Emin – The Modern Art Mouse.

Play at 2:18 min

Tracey Emin on being told that her bed isn’t art –

” just screamed louder and said yes it is, its my art”

I liked this idea that by being an artist you can clam anything is artwork, so I took it to the extreme and had fun with the idea that if I were an artist I clam everything as ‘Modern Art’.

And to make sure that everyone knew these things were modern art I began to put sticky notes everywhereeeee!  Buses, walls, people, signs, pretty much anything I came across had been given the title of Modern art.

Shortly after my sticky note escapades I came across David Shrigley‘s work and loved his tongue in cheek attitude.

Well within a few days it was my cousin’s 16th birthday and she give me the task of getting her something different, that nobody else would ever get her. Of course I accepted this challenge and immediately searched eBay for a taxidermy creature.

 One of my favourite works by Shrigley was the animals with signs, and what could be a more perfect gift for a girls 16th birthday?! And yes I know that this idea isn’t original and is stolen from Shrigley but as a gift I think it is fun and had to be done.

And of course I named him David Emin to honor the artists that I stole from to create him.

The Everyday part 1

“What happens When Nothing Happens?” – Paul Virilo

 “The everyday might be the common ground experience that allows museum visitors to understand the effects of history on the private lives of those who were usually overlooked.”

“The desire to confront things in the world at large rather that the world of art.”

Linked to this is the assumption that the everyday is both authentic and democratic; where ordinary people creatively use and transform the world they encounter from day today.”

“A turn to the everyday will bring art and life closer together.”

“Most of the art presented here or discussed here may aspire to directness and immersion but it does not approach the everyday in any straightforward documentary way, most of it uses ruses and subterfuge to find ways of representing and engaging with the quotidian.”

Authentic = genuine, real, bona fide

Democratic = equal, classless, open

Transformative = change something dramatically, undergo total change

Subterfuge = something designed to deceive

Quotidian = commonplace, done daily, recurring daily

For me seeing and using the everyday in art allows the objects or subject to be instantly recognizable and relatable but also every surreal and strange depending on the context in which I put them. I enjoy taking something safe and familiar and changing it to make it less usual. It draws people in and I think in some ways it helps people see the everyday in a different light. Things you see everyday aren’t boring or bland at all like many people might think, they become more extraordinary in my opinion.

Annette Messager

Messager is a French painter, photographer and sculpture.

‘I like to tell stories… children’s stories are monstrous,’

“I like to use material that you have in the house, for me the material of the house could be very strange and very dangerous too. it depends how you look at it.

TateShots: Annette Messager

Gabriel Orozco

Mexican Artist Gabriel Orozco had uses a range of everyday object ranging from cat food tins to  bits of rubber tires. For these two works he has used cars, and even though I see cars everyday i can’t stop looking at these works. On the left the car has been dismantled and suspended on wires to show how much of it would go together. Right the car has had the middle section removed and the two sides welded together.  By taking something so familiar and changing it it becomes more interesting and as Messager said it can be unsettling and strange.