Contextual Studies- Me as a Person and Artist

Personal Statement

I am a British Graphic Designer, Photographer and environmentalist who widely recognises the importance of both our historical and geological background in the development of our culture and society.

I see and understand how philosophy and mythology we have has come to shape the different cultures around the world. Furthermore how science and art reflect the development of our society.

I value and appreciate the great wonders of our world from our wildlife, landscape, artistic creations, stories and feel now more than ever is an important time to conserve and inform people on there importance and beauty.

My appreciation and interest in these elements are what great impacts my work. I look at a mixture of traditional and digital practices to create a piece of art in order to achieve the most effective results

My Manifesto

1. Take interest and learn, whether the names of all the Kardashians or every language that ever existed. Don’t be bias, don’t have a reason just be curious (it only every killed the cat after all)
2. Travel. To every place of beauty, interest, history or culture, anywhere just travel. You’ll experience more than you could have thought possible and all that time sat waiting for a train or aeroplane gives you time to think about who you are.
3. It’s okay to just spend all day in bed, sometimes people can be draining.
4. Question art. Don’t just dismiss it, especially the All-White Robert Ryman painting that sold for 20 million pounds.

My Projects

For my final project, I wanted to make a collection of photographs that would show my interests in history, culture and geography and tell a story of our civilisation. I took the opportunity to do the project while I was home in Orkney as history and geography, as well as the passing of time, is everything Orkney revolves around.

I have looked at neolithic sights like as Stonehenge, Ring of Brodgar, Skara Brae and The Standing Stones of Stenness to draw inspiration of what kind of sculpture I can make that will represent civilisation. I also looked at what types of environments all these places were set in as well as the history of their disappearance and reappearance.

While I was home in Orkney during the Easter holiday’s I a collection of photos of Stronsay landscapes that I wanted to play with and create into something to show a sense of place and the passing of time. I thought I might do this by painting or stitching on to the photos but I still need to develop this idea.

While out taking photos I had the idea to physical recreate my own, scaled down model of the neolithic sights such as Stonehenge, Ring of Brodgar. I did this using stones found on a local beach and dug them into the sand stand them up. I placed them in the tidal line so that the waves would slowly rise up and wash them away just like they have real neolithic places in Orkney. I also positioned the stones to be washed away to show visually how over time geologically our landscapes have changed and our history and culture as we’ve moved on from these building these significant stones to leaving them and moving on to grand complex structures.

I got a series of photos showing the progression of time with I edit to appear just as a collection of photos. I then explored how I could make them into something to show motion and the power of nature as it rushes over the rocks. I researched how to create a Gif to show this fast energy moves not only wasting away the rocks but how the sea and land have battled against each other.

As this is a contextual project about me as an artist I also wanted to look more into different media as well as the context of what I make. I while I was out taking my photos I used my Fujifilm Instax mini 90 neo classic instant camera to experiment with how the film makes creative differences to my Nikon D3400 DSLR Camera. One of the Settings that in Instax camera has is an instant double exposure mode. I used this to take a photograph the waves and then another of my mum standing in the same space before the film is then printed. This created a really really cool effected that I had practically no control over which was a really freeing creatively. The Model (my mum) was only partially visible through the roaring waves again showing this idea of how semi permeant everything if in life and how they places and people will have always existed even if there is only a memory or a part of a physical structure left in the present.