Inspirational Quotes

"We artists are indestructible, even in a prison cell or a concentration camp I would be almighty in my own world of art. Even if I had to paint my own pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.

Pablo Picasso

"Painters, do not fear imperfection. You will never achieve it! If you are mediocrities, you may try as you will to paint terribly badly, but people will still see that you are mediocre."

Salvidor Dali

Salvidor = Saviour. He saved art from the threat of dadaism, academic surrealism and abstract.

"One should respect everything one does not understand"

Salvidor Dali

"There is always one escape into wickedness. Always do the things that shock and wound people"

Salvidor Dali

"If the gods didn't exist we would have to invent them. We, as a species are too susceptible to the warm comforting lie of an ideology to stay out in the cold wind of uncertainty for any any length of time"

It is wrong to place out faith in such things, for we must remember that such things are at best an illusion and at worst a lie. Life is rich, varied and complex and ideologies are what Isaacs describes as " subjective and distilled and therefore very dangerous

People are very quick to devalue countries that are so called 'third world' or undeveloped. Yet in many ways these societies have evolved things that are far more advanced than the passage of time we're going through now.

Wittgenstein

"we feel that even if all possible scientific questions could be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this the answer, the solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.

Modern science is scientifically proving itself to be unscientific. As it incorporates into itself the concepts of irrationality, chaos, probability and uncertainty, science increasingly reveals itself to be alogical.

Corner House and CUBE Gallery

The Interactive Arts group went to these two galleries. The Corner House gallery was ace. It was film based and had a wide range of pieces starting with cartoon strips and leading to collages and video pieces.
The gallery started off with more first hand illustrative art work that you could really get close to and feel a connection with and the further up the gallery you went it came to what seemed more of a professional background of work and not as personal to the viewer. The collage itself which was at the end of the gallery seemed as if it has been designed as a film board for the behind the scenes film directors to be looking at, as if it were a script. Here is an image, It was my favourite piece in the gallery:
It's not a clear image because it was taken on my blackberry.

I really liked this exhibition, especially since I'm passionate about film, especially horror and it had a few artworks that I really enjoyed because of this.


The second gallery that we looked at was the CUBE gallery. I felt that this gallery was layed out in a way that shows the environment, and then onto how people affect the environment and then moving onto the end where the environment effects the person. I felt this because of an animation of a bird in a cage. That was its environment and it was confused and trying discover what it was all about.
Next to the animation was a layout of builders hats. Each one of the hats was decorated to represent a part of the environment that a builder had affected/altered.
This piece also supports my idea that the exhibition was influenced with how people affect the environment.
I felt encouraged by the helmets in this art gallery to continue on with the way that I work. Sometimes I feel discouraged by a lot of work in galleries because I simply don't like it and I don't have much interest in trying to like it. I work in the same kind of way, by making models to portray an idea that can seem more obvious that a splodge on a canvas. It is not because of any ignorance it just what works well with me because it is fun and adventurous.

Exhibition Project

We were given a project whereby we were to create a project and final outcome within 3 weeks for an exhibition held in the university.
This was crammed for me due to a situation going on at home so I didnt have much time to come up with a new project and do very much research so I carried it on from the previous shelter project and went down the route of people being controlled. After some thinking I decided to use the concept of children being conditioned and controlled from an early age without even knowing this.
For a long time I have wondered about the type of toys specific to the gender of a child. The range is very sexist and provides a role to the child which is expected of them once they reach adulthood. It is not entirely the same now that time has progressed and the job roles of the sexes have mingled but the toys have remained the same and this is where the idea for this painting came along.
In this canvas picture it shows the huge franchise thats is partly behind what is given to children. It is a huge representation of the toy industry and it is advertised in such a way that make children ecstatic. The toys are given a magical ethos which can make the crappiest of toys seem heavenly and this is why I used this chain over any others. In front of the "Toys R us" store is Sigmund Freud wearing the giraffe suit which is the logo character of the store. Freud is holding in one hand a Barbie doll and in the other hand an Action Man.
The reason that I used Freud in this image is because Freud was a hugely influencial psychologist. Especially in the way that parents raised their children. Many books that are written on child care are still today quoted from Freud theories and this is why Freud was used to represent a figure putting pressure on to people to believe what is right and wrong. Not so much now but in the past people believed that what he said was correct.
He is stood behind the two adult figures in the foreground showing how his theory has affected the way they have grown into adults in the future.
The female figure on the left shows a woman that has been conditioned by the Barbie doll. She looks slutty in Barbie glittery way and she is covered head to foot in plastic surgery lines showing how she is self conscious and aiming for the idealistic body image which is not realistic at all especially when considering Barbie's body if it were life size. She would be severly deformed.
I recognised that it was a stereotype that is not always correct because not every woman that played with Barbie is a body conscious, materialistic whore. So I looked into other aspects that can lead to this such as physical and mental abuse, The media, such as playboy magazines and other magzines constantly portraying beauty as being skinny woman with a specific style of features showing what men apparantly like which isnt always the case. And so I printed off these images and made a collage out of them along the plastic surgery lines. I also took Angelina Jolie's eyes and stuck them in the same place as the drawn womans eyes as if there is a catalogue that people can pick what features they would like and buy them.
The soldier on the right has been conditioned by the Action Man. He has taken on the role that has been acted out by the figurine...Again I can not stereotype that this is always the case and so I also added a collage to this image. Other situations that I feel could lead to this are things such as physical and mental abuse, the media also with the adverts they produce that are pro-join the army, propoganda messages, games and films and people that live on council estates who have usually had a hard upbringing are targeted as this is seen as a better way of life. Some of these people may feel they have nothing to lose and so without realising some of them are targetted.

Once I had finished this painting I didn't feel like it was complete. I felt that the image looked naive and I wasn't happy with how I had drawn the figures at the front. I felt that they looked like something I had drawn when I was a child.

To go with the image on the wall of the exhibition I also created two happy meal boxes with propoganda messagerie on them. I used the happy meal box because I know how children are hugely influenced by McDonalds. I know this becaue I know I was, and I also know that my little sister had never been there before but whenever we walked past a McDonalds she was all of a sudden hungry. This is because she had been influenced by the adverts that she had seen on the television or on billboards. I picked the happy meal box because this is what children get excited over and the bold colours all over them are appealing. Here are the two that I produced:

I also designed a packaging for the McDonalds burger, Promoting that "It's OK" Percy Pig doesn't mind having his bollocks in your burger:

Here is the painting and objects in the cavendish exhibition: