processandenquiryseanmerrin

[processandenquiryseanmerrin]

this is my time based piece. enjoy

[processandenquiryseanmerrin]

this is just a picture of the object, that I used to cover my face in the time based work, up on the wall. this is just basically kitchen roll a paint. trash basically. but it's part of the work that's compelled me the most with thoughts of what else I could do with paint and kitchen roll. Making horrible quasi fabrics definitely appeals to me. as an object it has weight. it's chunky and visceral and I like those qualities in my work

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I was eating haribo Star Mix whilst I was doing work with heart imagery, and after eating one of the hearts, the idea to stick one to the wall came up. So it's been on the wall since, and I thought to include it in the final layout because, though it's small, it's very much related to my process and enquiry. It seems pretty stale by now, so I wouldn't advise eating it. Reminds me of when that guy taped a banana to a gallery wall

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I wanted to find a way to recreate my corpse hijinks, from the 2d to 3d workshop, when displaying the work I did then. The idea to bring in an old pair of boots came to mind. I rolled the big bit of paper up as best I could and then put the boots poking out the end to make it look like there was a body beneath the paper. And it worked out pretty well. the classmates present whilst I was installing it were all very supportive

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these are the leather laces that I used in my time based work. I just thought this configuration was a nice way of displaying some of the ephemera of that work. Having them just scrunched up in a ball to one side displays them in a way that fit in with all the rest of the work

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this is the casting I made during the casting workshop. I've chosen to put the wee red pot that I use for keeping small change in on top of the casting. I got the pot from a self professed witch after a night of speed fuelled debauchery and I like how that represents my exterior 'process' and 'enquiry' in regards to intoxicated misadventures so merging that with an object representative of 'academic' process and enquiry I thought was quite a good idea. Kind of looks like a pot of money sailing a turbulent dark ocean that hides my heart therein. perhaps a reflection of the turbulent trajectory of my life thus far and the quest for financial security and success

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there, unfortunately, wasn't a practical way to display this piece, so I lay it folded on the desk. It was one of the stronger bits of work, so it's a bit of a shame, but hey ho. It might have even spoiled the balance of the ensemble, so maybe it's even for the better. either way, it's there to be assessed with a suggestion to unfurl at the assessors' leisure included therein

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earlier in this module I made this box to store my pens and that. but then I went on to think about even though I made it just for pens that it was still part of my creative process and some thought went into how I wanted to look. So this is a development of that idea, by actually presenting it as a 3D piece. I took all the pens out of it and thought to put the 'heart' from my 'Significant object' within the box. Relates to the notions of shrouding I was exploring whilst being the 'hear' of the heart imagery I was working with. I liked how it looked with the lid lay next to it. As though the viewer has opened the box to see what's inside without the viewer actually having to 'open' the box

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I really enjoyed laying everything out ready for assessment. It's nice to see all the things one worked on all together. I had to really clean my desk to make it presentable as I'd not washed it since starting this year. All my work has a noticeable congruence to it that I think is pleasing

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Got a bit carried away the weekend before the assessment. Went to my friends house with the intention of shooting my time based response for this unit but got distracted after drinking a beer and ordering a chippy. I stated their that night because we were going for Sunday lunch with my family the next day. After that we went back, again with the intent of shooting the video, but we ordered a proper carry out. And when we were drunk we got a bag in. I knew this would leave me with less time to get things in order but I struggle saying no to a good MWI. at least it got me writing the evaluation, Sigmund Freud style

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Tefillin

As I was making my time based response, the way I was using leather laces reminded me of the jewish practice of tying the tefillin. Also, I wrote already about religious garb with my looking into the Niquab in Islam, so this feels like like a connection in that chain of thought. I've always liked how they looked and remembered how haredim would stand on the streets of tel aviv trying to get people to put them on and pray with them. they tried getting me to do it but didn't want to speak to me once they found out I wasn't actually jewish

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Time based response

So I decided to record a 'performance' of myself doing to myself what I did to my map by painting myself black and obscuring my features with the object that I made. This was fun and seems to be a medium I find myself coming back to as my academic career goes on. I like how it feels like 'actually doing something', a lot of the time I find myself considering the validity of some art on how 'tangible' it is or how much effort seems to of went into it

[processandenquiryseanmerrin]

Niqab

the most extreme example of Islamic 'modesty'. It covers the features and form of women essentially redacting their physical appearance for all but the closest to them. The idea came to me as I was using one of my creations to shroud my face. Wearable obfuscation. It's such an interesting aesthetic what with all the blocky black shapes. So austere/severe for a religious garb. One designed in reaction to the sometimes brutal nature of inter gender relations.

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Putting it over me

Like with the gold foil and 2d to 3d workshops I thought to 'go under' my creation. This time it only manages to cover my face but I think that's alright and could lead to interesting ideas by itself. The wee square of 'fabric' with eyelets that I made has got me really interested to explore that idea further in future because its rather robust and looks great

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Making an Object for Literal Redaction

I'd been using a piece of kitchen roll to put paint on whilst painting in the studio. When it dried, it led to an interesting texture, so I decided to paint the whole thing to make a square of interesting texture. Then I thought to put eyelets in it using the punch I'd bought for an earlier visual language 3d development. It's an interesting 2d yet 3d object, I think I like the 2d yet 3d notion as lots of my work tends towards that. I wonder if I could use this object for further developments, it looks like it could be used to block the sight of something

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Casting Workshop

we did a workshop focused on casting where we took our 'Significant' objects and made a mould of it using algenate. We then poured plaster into that mould to make a casting. My object was a bit too big for the mad boards we made, so I was only able to cast the bottom half of my object. But that led to this interesting overspill situation which led to my casting becoming akin to a wee table and made the heart look like it was submerged in darkness

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Materiality Development Finalisation

it took a few layers of paint to get the red lines to the consistency I liked due to the opacity of the paint so it took a few goings back to to get it to how I wanted it. When i did, though, it felt like it was missing something, and I thought to paint some of the details in blue after looking at some medical illustrations of hearts and their use of blue to differentiate veins from arteries. When it was all done, I took it out to the gallery space to see how it would look on the wall. The scale of the piece is apparent when it's up on the wall, and it reads well