BA1b Fine Art - Reflective Journal & Project Research

I assisted with the degree show set up this week. A lot of things weren't new to me, but it was still a good experience to see what degree show set up is like and to be able to talk to 3rd year students. It is a long process to get spaces ready for exhibitions, it involves sanding down walls, filling holes, gum stripping gaps and painting over everything to get it looking right for exhibitions. These are good transferable skills to have for future careers and for own use as well.   

Exhibition Set-Up: This week was the week of the group exhibitions. My group’s theme was Equality/Diversity. We set up on Monday, this involved gathering our work together and discussing where we wanted to go and what pieces would work together best. I had originally made some pieces specifically for this presentation/exhibition, but after writing about a past piece of mine I had made earlier in the project and seeing how popular it was on my social media I decided to use this piece instead. It also seemed to fit in with the theme a lot better as well. After putting it up I felt that there needed to be something else, as there was too much white space around it. I looked through my work and found a couple more pieces that I felt had similar styles to my first piece and placed them next to it. To hang them I originally Blu -tacked some bull dog clips to the wall and hung the prints from the clips, but I decided to add some string across the wall to add a purpose to the bull dog clip...

After the advanced printing workshops, I decided to go back to my dry point etchings and combine them with my copper etchings to see how they would look. I combined them with my small hard wax and soft wax etchings, and my aqua tinted copper plate etching. They worked really well together and came out better than I thought. I think the combination with the smaller hard/soft wax plates worked the best as they were similar sizes to the dry point etchings, and the composition worked well because of this.  I think I'd like to take this further, perhaps even adding my wood cuts to them - combing three different types of print to make one print/image. Possibly even cutting them out and introducing a collage element like my other prints. Out of the three below, I think the middle one worked the least, at least not how I had imagined it would work. I wanted the aqua-tinted plate to form the background for my dry point etchings, but I didn't think the sizing through and probably could...

I saw some incredible pieces of artwork while out in Madrid, more specifically the street art. I really liked the hand holding street art the most as it fit in with what my project is about. The text in between the hands reads 'Compartir Vs. Competir' which translates to ' to share vs to compete' which I love as it speaks about unity against competition. I also love the patterns within the hands and if given the time I would definitely create some artworks based on this idea. Additionally, we went and visited small galleries on the outskirts of the city, and we saw a particular gallery of this artists work which combined text with painted abstract imagery. I really liked how the text looked as if it was coming out of the paint, like it was there originally and was painted over. I also liked the distortion of some of the text which made it difficult to read.  I also loved how some of the galleries were painted over on the outside, as it broke the boundar...

This was the main inspiration for my work and my slight change of direction within my work. I was really inspired and proud to see women around the world standing up for what they believe in and fighting for their voices to be heard in a ever changing world. It reminded me of all the struggles that women have had to overcome over the decades - sexism & representation within the media and the workplace, the right to vote, equal pay, role changes and so on. I wanted to focus on that within my own work in my own way. I was also amazed at how it started off being based in Washington, then it suddenly became this global event where most countries suddenly got involved and it was that sense of unity in an already divided world that further inspired me to start looking into this theme of female representation. I have used images of the marches within my own work as part of my collages as I wanted to link this back to my own work.

Both of these exhibitions were created with the idea to challenge the political changes happening at the time.  These were set up to effectively 'fight back' to Donald Trump and his sexist remarks towards women, and his potentially damaging administration towards women.  These exhibitions are part of what inspired me to go down the route of female representation as I was proud to see women of all backgrounds standing their ground and making their voices heard. These are good examples of how art can make a difference as the Nasty Women exhibition managed to raise $42,000 for Planned Parenthood - an organisation dedicated to helping women plan their future in regards to parenthood, and allow them safe and affordable abortion treatment. They are also good examples of female artists coming together and making their own voices heard, and showing the art world that female artists can be just as powerful and influential as male artists.  I also like the idea of ...