Skin, distortions, disorders, alterations, temporary, pigmentations, texture, pressure. Trying to capture or represent through different media?
-Latex, paint, ink, photographs -
First Photograph developed and printed.
Distortion of body through movement and photography. The skin is altered and distorted from pressure against it’s own self. -
Showing the photographs upside down like the above image adds to the distortion and alteration making the image itself more of a mystery. This is similar to those first images I produced, also in black and white, of the skin being forced through the grid-like sections. I like the unknown aspect of it. Although with this photo it is recognisable as skin, it is not so much which part and that is what I am trying to capture. I want to photograph more using film and then develop them myself, perhaps overlaying different images together. Perhaps 8″x10″ images.
The body and our skin in particular can be adjusted, altered and modified to our own specifications. We can appear how we want to, even if this is not the way we were intended. There are many more routes of this theme for me to explore. How we can interact with the inanimate, how our body lets us. How we react against others. Pressure, force, the difference between a slow, gentle pressure which takes a long while to take effect, in comparison to a swift, abrupt movement or contact. How we can change the shape of our own bodies.
Dorota Sadovska ‘Corporalities’, 2003. -”Here she bares her breasts, denuding them of sexual potency by treating them as sheer sculptural matter, and reminding us of the medical necessity of self-examination.”
There is much more to be explored, and I think to do it, I need to almost block out the first few works I created so as to let my mind wander into new surroundings. But before I do, before I step away from the grid theme, a piece of art, a performance that I had been thinking of relative to my work, but couldn’t remember who it was.
Kira O’ Reilly
‘Succour’, 2002. -”O’ Reilly applied a grid of masking tape onto her legs and torso, made a nick with a scalpel in each square, and then removed the tape to reveal her body patterned with small cuts. The literal wounding can read as a metaphor for tenderness and disclosure, and the skin as analogous to social guardedness, clothing and other modes of concealment.”
If, for instance, someone were to ask me in a pub or someplace, what are you doing, what work do you create, what is your art? I aways find this a difficult question to answer, well not difficult, it is just not a simple answer. I can’t reply I am a painter, or a sculptor or a photographer. I tend to use the media that best reflects the idea or work. My work and practice changes constantly. I don’t yet know what I am, but maybe I don’t have to?
