Monthly Archives: July 2014

Where is Narcissus?

Spending school holidays in my grandparent’s country house meant that each time there would be a different product waiting to be sold, occupying one of the rooms.  The excitement of seeing what was stacked up was almost more exciting than seeing family.

One of these products was the narcissus flower.  Opening the room and being hit by the intense, almost toxic smell was as impressive as the mountain formed by the flowers.

The region was well known to grow the flower and furthermore, the small creek that was walking distance from the house was said to be the same body of water that Narcissus saw his own reflection and feel in love, the same body of water in which he drowned.

His story has always interested me, as I could never imagine liking myself enough that I would fall in love.  Negative feelings about self-image is much more prevalent for the general population and myself.

In this series I wanted to show bodies that were altered by their own reflections to represent the fluctuations within our own self-image.  It is our thoughts, our own reflections that cause distortion.

 

 

De-Brutalising Barbican

Ever since I modelled in a live installation piece in Barbican by Reza Aramesh in late 2007 for the “Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now” show, the architecture of The Barbican and its surrounding area has interested me.  The large concrete structures demand authority and bang their fists on the table in an uncontrolled and clumsy manner.

To pay homage to the retro Polaroid with its wave of comeback, I purchased film from The Impossible Project to experiment.  I wanted to take power back from the Brutal buildings and manicure the rough edged nails those fists had curled up inside their palms.

The short video here shows the process of making a “polaroid emulsion lift”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7Rs3PxfsAo

TEMPORAL CRUMBS

Do you want to meet me? Do you want to see my day-to-day thoughts, the fluctuations of my emotions?   Do you want to penetrate my mind?

Visual diaries have been part of artists ever since art existed on paper.  Nan Golding, Cindy Sherman and Lorna Simpson are just a few names that come to mind from the recent decades.

Initially keeping a diary felt like something I would not enjoy and perhaps I was fearful of the revelations that it potentially held for me.  Thoughts are fluid like water; they move, they evaporate or become solid.  Storing them in a diary means keeping the water at 20 degrees.

Now I cherish my diary like treasure, something I always want to have close by, an archive of my temporal existence.  Here are few pages from it.