Degree Show Work

My Degree Show Piece. A Sculpture of a Wooly Mammoth with accompanying Video performance

Background alternatives and mirrored work

These are images that i have used a lot but they have never been printed.

The palm tree image was a photo cut from a travel brochure, for me it depicted an element of culture that was both despicable but completely natural, the need for utopia. I saw these as bill board size images, again backlit and encased in some kind of perspex. 

I intended to keep making more of these mirrored images but rather than stay in thinking two dimensionally i think i moved on to more sculptural work. Using the caveman images and the two mountainscapes i took in Scotland i made a booklet, each image was printed on acetate and framed between two pieces of perspex, all the images were then bound on one side by sticky backed plastick.
I referred to the booklet as a 'product' as oppose to an artwork, it made it more tangible. based on the plastic element of the materials i wanted it to reflect a consumerist element. It really interested me at the time but it was still too badly made, for the piece to work it should have been made much more carefully and with no blemishes.

3rd year Degree work

The frame is based on light up bill boards, particularly referencing large scale city scape imagery from films like Blade Runner, i wanted to create a consumerist attitude towards the 'Shaman' much like how Marcus Coates adapts the role of the shaman for a condemned council estate building.

These are sculptures called Bear and Wolf, by taking them from being entirely just animal shaped and adding 'scaffold' i feel they take on new totemic roles as they become tamed for our use as prizes or sacrifices.

A test shot for a video exploring contemporary references to the application of shamanic ritual in western society. A process of communication through mysticism and spirit guides.

Performer no.1 Dirty Polar Shaman

This is a performance that corresponded with a time based shutter setting on the still camera. I was using Stage blood to spit out when the shutter was released in order to capture the spit travelling through the air in reference to Bruce Naumans' 'Fountain.' On reflection i thought as a series of images something suggested a kind of inhibited movement like some kind of spontaneous revulsion or trance. I was focusing on shamanism at that point and wanted to use performance to transcend but after a few weeks of research and work around the subject i felt i was more attracted to the physicality of shamanism rather than the spirituality of it. I am now focusing on gaining enjoyment from superficiality, quite contrasting from this work were i thought i might gain some kind of meditative silence from performing these pieces.

Performer no.2 the Cave Man

This Performance centred around the creation of the heavy eyebrow piece made from face putty and human hair. It was a character creation and i wanted the images to document a character rather than a performance. I want the piece to allude more to a fantasy of the cave man, which is why the documentation is photography based and mainly on the face.

Sophies' Basement Performance, Clanger vs the Soup Dragon