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The Hypothetical Art Project

Myself and Sarah came up with a (hypothetical) art project, with no budget or limitations of any kind. After much deliberation with settled for the theme of borders as it’s a topic that is very relevant right now and there are many borders around the work that are controversial and unsettled. Its especially important at the moment to be talking about borders and border control due to the political turmoil surrounding borders and immigration.

The project that we decided on would be an art exhibition hosted by each of the bordering countries around the world. Both emerging artist, established artists and communities would put forward and produce art for the exhibition based around the theme of “what does it mean to be human?”.

Advertising for this event would be put out via TV and the internet and also there will be either a live stream or previous recording of the exhibitions that would be put on the internet so that people would be able to see it if they weren't able to go in person.

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Tracey Emin’s work isn't something that I would initially be drawn to as the vagueness of the text doesn't always speak to me. For example, “Move Me” isn't really a phase that I'm attracted to because I struggle to put any context behind it. Whereas, I really like “More Solitude” as I think that’s a message many people need to see and take on board for a number of different reasons.

The almost handwritten quality of her text makes each message seem a lot more personal plus I think the contrast between the bright neon  colours of the and the black backgrounds work really well.

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Graphic design is generally made up of: text, illustration and / or photography. The text that is used in graphic design is typically created with the idea in mind to deliver a message or concept. Graphic design can be used for a number of different reasons: to advertise a product or company, address concerns to the publics general health (such as the dangers of smoking) or address environmental issues. I chose to focus on the environmental issue of deforestation for the graphic design on my posters. “Don’t give nature the chop” – In this design I wanted to focus on showing the contrast between what a tree gives the environment and what it’s like when the tree isn't there anymore due to deforestation. The first half of the design I wanted an almost “Disney-like” feel about it with the heart shaped leaves and singing owl I feel like I wasn't far off achieving that idea. The other side of the illustration is a rotting tree stump with fungal growths and an axe laying on top of it suggesting the tree had been chopped down. The line separating both sides of the image connects to the apostrophe in the text below. I wanted to do this so that both the text an image would look more involved with each other rather than being two separate pieces. My favourite part of this graphic design is the typography; I like the layout of the letting as it’s balanced and almost symmetrical, but mainly the use of the word “chop” as I think it relays nicely to the chopping of the axe.

“Put nature under construction” – I much prefer this design over the first deforestation poster that I did. Essentially the bottom half of the illustration is a tree stump with all different sorts of fungal growths, moss, marks and cracks on it. I personally think that whenever I see a tree stump looking like this it has some sort of beauty about it, but all I can think is what the rest of the tree would look like if it was left alone to grow in peace. The rest of the illustration is scaffolding put in place for the ”redevelopment of the tree trunk” so to speak, with four tiny construction workers on it. Originally I just had the text written by itself on the white background but it looked bare, out of place and just didn't’t stand out at all. The construction signs I think make the text stand out a lot more than with out them and it also ties in nicely with the construction theme of the rest of the piece.

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Michael Lyons: Full Circle.

West Park, Wolverhampton – Initially I wasn’t really drawn to this piece of work at all. This is because I thought it looked quite boring, dull and lifeless, but then after getting a closer look at it I saw an aspect of it that I really liked. I think it’s interesting how Lyons has used blocks of watercolour to create the base of the flowers, then once dry has gone over the top of them with ink. Adding finer detail with thinner and thicker lines of ink making the image more accurate and recognisable.

Michael Lyons: Full Circle.

Sculpture - I walked straight pass this sculpture when I first saw it because I find it difficult to get any sort of connection with pieces of art work like this. When I walked past it for the 27th time (it was probably only my 3rd time walking past but I was tired so it felt like a lifetime) I walked around the other side, which was by a window. The change in light source and angle made me like Lyons sculpture about 000.1% more. So I thought I’d give it a go at sketching it in different ways. I experimented with using simple shapes, straight separate lines and shading. Even though I tried to like Michael Lyons sculpture I still unfortunately don’t, but I feel like sketching it out did help develop my shading skills so I guess that’s a plus.

Michael Lyons: Full Circle.

Female Figure – The body position of the female figure is what I found most interesting about this piece. The way that the hands have been placed on her knee looks like she's almost cradling herself, and the direction of her head and eyes look quite depressed and saddened. Almost like she's given up. Plus the sculpture is made from lead and as you can see the colour varies, I think this is an interesting topic to look into because I think it shows that everyone has minor flaws and faults.

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Clive Barker: Pop Art. 1961 – 1981

Brains – This piece caught my interest as I was intrigued by the way that the brain is being displayed in the glass case. I think that this concept shows how the brain should be treated in a luxurious manor. Another contributing factor to this is that the brain is gold which is classed as a “precious metal”, symbolising the importance of the brain. You could say that the glass case represents the body and that our bodies are just the display cases to our minds and that our intelligence is what shines out rather than what we look like. Because when looking at Barker’s piece you look through the case (past the exterior appearance) and look at the brain (the person within).

Clive Barker: Pop Art. 1961 – 1981

Target Diamond – I liked this piece of Barker’s collection because of the design and use of material. It’s made from corrugated card which is typically only used to make prototypes or models and then scrapped or recycled but is rarely used for final products. The side angle of this is really interesting because of the contrast between the ridges when it changes direction. I also appreciate the design aspect of this pieces because it had to have been done really intricately in order for this to be the final result, and I like that you can almost feel the hard work that went into producing this.

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Barbara Kruger uses a combination of black-and-white photographs and captions or phrases (using the colours white and red) over the top in a blocked out format. The contrast between the monochromatic background photography and the bold red boxes of text make both the image / images and the caption standout. In the text, she will either use pronouns or personal pronouns to allow the viewer to build more of a connection with the piece and for the message she is trying to convey to relay over with effect. Typically Kruger will use the text in her art to express cultural issues and topics including: feminism, stereotypes and identity. I took inspiration from Barbara Kruger’s piece “I am young and curious”, as it reminded me of the limitations that many woman have and will face at some point in their lives of being underestimated and put into specific boxes, not being allowed to be “curious”. This made me start thinking about the differences that society enforces between men and women. I wanted to focus on a limitation that is given to girls from birth, as unfortunately I believe that as soon as our gender is revealed, society begins to view us in a slightly different way. I came across the idea of the “pay gap”. Many people don’t believe that the gender pay gap is still around, however it very much is. In 1997 the UK pay gap between men and women was 27.5% and in 2016 it went down to 18.1%. Meaning that the average female born baby is likely to be paid (around) 18.1% less than her male co-workers. For my poster inspired by Barbara Kruger I collaged different photographs of young girls that I found in local newspapers. I tried to represent females of different: ages, social class and ability (and tried to use children of different races but the media seems to only publicise Caucasian children so that was a lot harder, but that’s a different issue for another day). I censored out the eyes of each female child to represent the fact that we seem to feel the need to shelter our girls and not show them the truth. Lastly I then digitally changed my poster so that it would look more like Barbara’s work.

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Constructing Identity

Chris Ofili’s “No Woman No Cry” is a tribute piece of art dedicated to Stephan Lawrence. At age 19 Stephan was murdered due to a racist attack at a bus stop in 1993. This case quickly became one of the most known racial killings in UK history. Ofili’s painting, produced in 1998 is a profile of a crying black woman. Once you look closer at the painting you can see that there are so many different abstract aspects to this piece which makes it so much more of a tribute to Stephan Lawrence than what it seems at first glance. -The face of the woman isn't painted solid but is a collection of brown dots. This to me symbolises the amount of people who have been affected by Stephan’s death, predominantly people of colour that have been affected. -Each of the tear drops coming from the woman's eyes have a small image of Stephan Lawrence collaged into them. -The crisscrossed beads that are across the whole of the painting portray a cage or a fence of some sort, showing that the woman is trapped or maybe hidden away.

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“IDENTITY” Inspired by our photography based session on Monday, I used objects from my house that resemble the word identity 

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“FOUND”

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-Designing- (Made in Wolves) We were given the brief of designing a product or service for Wolverhampton. To start off we went around Wolverhampton and did some primary research in the form of taking pictures of the city. Then from this we started to sketch out some initial ideas for the design. Choosing the buzz word of “venue” we started to branch out thinking of what can be associated with both Wolverhampton and the word venue. We concluded that the city isn’t very lively in the day but then comes to life in the night time. From the theme of the duality of Wolverhampton, we began to come up with different ideas such as: a split personality types, day and night, light and dark, happy and sad, etc. As one of the main buildings/ venues in Wolverhampton is the Grand Theatre, we decided to base the design on a split faced theatre mask (with half of the face happy and the other half being sad).

Once set on the theatre mask idea we then experimented with different designs and layouts for the shape and the different expressions that would suit the mask and Wolverhampton the best.  The Wolverhampton motto is “out of darkness cometh light” and because of this we wanted to incorporate this within the design too as it is a part of the city’s identity.

 Using Photoshop, I combined the crest of Wolverhampton and the motto with the theatre mask design. This was done by scanning in my sketched-out design then changing the colours, size and shading of the initial sketch. But then to make the design into more of a product rather than just a concept, after changing and simplifying the design further, I put it onto a few plank t-shirt templates on PowerPoint.

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-Mapping- continuing to explore all aspects of identity as a table we individually mapped out the journeys that we take to university every day on one big piece of paper. To ensure that each of the routes correlated together we decided to have all of them heading towards one main area on the paper as we all have the same destination (the university building). To make this piece as a whole work out better we should have started by actually drawing or marking out where the university building is as this would give everyone more of a clear vision of where to end their journey.

 To get the general shape of my route, I used a screenshot from "google maps" of the journey that I take to get to university every day, printed it out and roughly sketched this with a pencil on my section of the paper. 

I wanted to use different line thicknesses to show which parts of my journey I walk and which parts involve using a mode of transport (being a bus in this case). So, I used a thin line to show the areas where I walk and then a much thicker line showing when I take the bus. I chose to use a graphite stick to create the main body of my journey as I enjoy the fact that different pressures can affect how to graphite is put onto the paper. When I was using the graphite stick, I changed how hard I was pressing down with the stick at key points of my journey. Where the line is darker in colour that shows the places that grab my attention and then the lighter parts of the route show when I’m not paying any attention to where I am. Going in again with the graphite stick, I sketched out the key elements of my bus journey. Including the “Welcome to Wolverhampton” sign, which catches my eye because they recently replaced it and now I annoyingly can’t stop looking at it and “The Man on The Horse” statue in town because when I see that I know I should press the button on the bus and stand up.

Then to add more colour I used green and brown pastels to show the contrast in my journey between the rural areas where I start my route, to the more urban city centre. I used the green as there’s mainly fields and tress at the start, then I used the brown because most of the buildings in town are made from brown bricks.

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-Wolverhampton Art Gallery- (hairstyles) All the images involved within this piece of art work are different hairstyles that belong to black women. Even though I’m not a black woman myself, I still find this empowering as it shows how a group of people who are put in one category whether that’s to do with your race, gender, age, sexuality etc. everyone is different and chooses to express themselves in several different ways. I liked how even though hair is pretty much the same thing/serves the same purpose for everyone, it can look so completely different: in colour, style, texture and length. However, I also really liked the fact that hair can be tied down to your identity. For example, as soon as you hear the name Amy Winehouse everyone automatically knows what her hair looked like. It just shows how much hair and your appearance can but doesn’t always have to, define your identity.

-New Art Gallery Walsall- ("Sedimentary Flow”) the artist Barbara Nicholls has a collection of worked called “sedimentary flow”. I think this type of abstract art is quite interesting as everyone will see each piece differently. Most of them to me look like brains or bodily organs like the intestines or something along those lines when I looked at them from across the room. But then when I went up close to them I started to see some images within them. Specifically, I liked this blue section of one of them because I thought it looked like an elephant. I thought this was interesting because the elephant is the largest existing land manual yet without looking at this piece close I couldn’t see the elephant at all. This to me shows that we can be completely oblivious to the largest of matters and it isn’t until we look closer and change our perspectives that you can see what’s been right in front of you the whole time.

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Identity Collages • The first collage is based around the idea of travel. The sections with the ripped up bus and train tickets symbolise the adventures that I have been on previously, and the fact that the tickets are ripped, show how the memories are slowly leaving my mind. The sections that are simple pencil outlines represent the journeys that are currently being planned out. The three sections that have been cut out with a dark material put behind them, show my travels that haven’t happened yet and aren’t being planned. The fact that the material is dark shows the lack of clarity in my mind with regards to my future adventures. I was going to put something on the other side of the page but I decided not to because I think the blank space creates isolation within the piece making the tickets more prominent. • The second collage was inspired by the idea of using makeup as amour and because of this I actually used makeup products to colour and shade the helmet. After cutting the grill holes out of the front section, I stuck a woman’s face behind it, crumpling it up. This to me shows that not only can makeup make you feel trapped and like you’re hiding yourself from the world, but you can also feel strong and protected by it. I didn’t put anything behind this image as I felt it would distract from the true meaning. The fact that makeup makes me feel strong and less vulnerable and so it can stand alone on a page and hold its own. • The third collage was inspired by the poppy flower. Not only is Poppy my middle name, so evidently that’s how I identify with it, but also I really appreciate what I believe the poppy stands for. The poem that the background is make up of is narrated by the poppy and to me it stands for perseverance, commitment and pride. As the world changes the poppy stands there strong and proud and those three words are what I try to live my life by. Perseverance. Commitment. Pride. I made the poppies 3D by using masking tape and then painting over the top of it.

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proving continuous line drawings continue to be a challenge • hopefully these skills will develop over the weeks to come at wlv uni

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i don't know what to put