SILENCE project

SILENCE: Conceptual, experimental work, followed by a graphic solution.  

3.1 Themed Project "Silence" (part 1 & 2) Brief p1: "Research the possible concepts and visual potential of 'Silence' and with lateral visual experimentation, attempt to conceptually interpret silence in any media of form." Brief p2: "Produce a finished visual document in text and image - realising the visual ideas and experiments from part 1."

The Plan!: 

In Silence Part 1 I intended to produce a conceptual body of work that explored the idea of silence through research and experimental work. I picked themes that really interested me and many of the explorations were a continuation of 2^nd year contextual studies work, in the area of the irrational and surrealism. For Silence Part 2 I wanted to bring this research to a more directed interpretation and conclusion. At first I wanted to produce a piece that commented on my explorations, but with development and critical feedback, my aim was to produce work that was, in itself, the essence of the issues that I became so involved in, with particular focus on ideas around questioning everyday reality. 

Silence part one was very much a research piece and became an explorative and experimental journey for me that stemmed from past projects and research into ‘the irrational’. I first started to look at the ways in which we silently represent ourselves and the truths hidden behind exterior representation. The work of Alison Jackson and her photography that had the power to shock the nation with its clearly fantasy scene of Princes Dianna and Dodi with a baby, summed up the power of the constructed image. To most Dianna was only ever seen as an image in the press or on TV so the re-representation of her was just as real to them. Work from women surrealists also looked at these issues, such as Claude Cahun who photographed herself as a very masculine figure re-representing herself and questioning the ‘reality’ of self image, that can so easily be constructed. The bizarre scenes so meticulously created by Gregory Crewdson to show strange and other worldly happenings silently occurring amongst the pristine streets of suburban America, also fed into my fascination. The idea of questioning ‘reality’ as it is represented to us and as we present it to others, became a key theme. I wanted my images to comment that so much is silently hidden beneath a presented surface and that we essentially construct our own reality. I set up ‘fantasy scenes’ of how I wished to portray myself in alternative realities. A slightly surreal edge was given to a garden scene whereby I set up a 1920s living room amongst the ivy and mirrored a black and white image of my great grandmother who’s necklace I wore. This already constructed reality was then further manipulated by cropping and altering, creating images that were so subjective, they could hold any reality an outsider interpreted them with. I also began working with model houses, with the idea that they are constructed to capture a reality that is portrayed as ‘idyllic’ yet which if actually lived in, would be like any other lifestyle, less than perfect underneath.

Silence Part 2

Continuing the exploration of themes from silence part one, I developed a visual and a style of work which rather than commenting on our world of constructed reality and uncanny continuous re-representation, would in itself as a physical object, create those themes. Miniature collectable pottery houses are the recreation of an existing idealised reality and are often collected by those for whom this reality is unattainable, it is a fantasy, a representation of a reality that we have been conditioned to see as ‘ideal’, which, in itself, is a form of constructed reality as who defines the perfect home and why should we have an idealised perception of that? It is a completely irrational act that as humans we should seek to obtain a representation of a reality that is shut to us, because buy purchasing such a perfectly detailed representative model, we own that reality in miniature?! Miniature model people also never fail to ‘affect’ a response from even the most unimaginative of persons. Artists such as Slinkachu tell the struggles and adventures of painted miniature figures in the big city, for whom our hearts go out as we silently view a narrative that is clearly portrayed to us as constructed, yet for whom we can’t help but see a reality. The form of a postcard was inspired by the surrealist use of them, who by putting their imagery on such a mass produced object undermined conventional conceptions. The surrealists often turned everyday objects into something extraordinary, celebrating the everyday and ‘the norm’. It is this refusal to accept the ‘reality’ of the world as it is presented to us and as convention, preconceptions, and conditioning points us toward, that my work in part one was so fascinated in. I wanted the piece to not only portray a repeatedly represented and re- represented constructed idealised reality but to subvert that image into a reality that is perhaps not so perfect, a scene that makes the viewer strangely uncomfortable as they look closer into an image that, if only for a second makes them question the conditioning to which they would have responded to a simply quaint scene. The tinting of the photographs gives a warm nostalgic quality to play on that idea of a longing to return home, that underneath that exterior facade of ‘wish you were here’ postcards so often say ‘wish I was home’. I would find it equally fascinating if a viewer refused to see the scene as anything but perfect, missing a very threatening undercurrent to the images would perhaps say more about the construction that person’s world, the bubble in which we all choose to live our conditioned lives.