Reflect & Research

https://www.foam.org/talent/spotlight/interview-with-rachel-de-joode I found an interview with Rachel De Joode, I decided to read it because I wanted to find out more about her practice and how she creates her work.

'A central interest of mine is the play between the physical and the virtual world, exploring the relationship between the three dimensional object and its two dimensional representation. My work is a constant play between surface, meaning, and materiality, disrupting the entanglement between these different plateaus in order to regain simplicity.' - Rachel De Joode Rachel De Joode is another artist who combines photography and sculpture. Her work is very much installation based, to me it looks like abstract recreations of the body. The colours in her work are mainly fleshy tones. I really like how large scale her work is, the way you can walk all around it and properly appreciate it from every angle. The shapes of her work are really interesting as well some look quite human like. I decided to look at Rachel De Joode because I want to see how other artists combine photography and sculpture, there are so many different ways to do so. Most of the artist...

Letha Wilsons work is a mix of photography and sculpture. She uses different industrial materials to physically create wonderful structures. Some of her works are quite abstract and I really like the contrast between the material she has used and the beautiful photograph that is collaged in with it. The photos in Wilsons work are landscapes and natural scenes, this works really well against the heavy industrial materials. Most other work is site specific and large scale, if the work is left in an outside area then the colours in the work change due to the weather and environment, I really like this idea as it feels as though her work is constantly changing, it keeps going through processes. Another thing I like about her work is that a piece is not always just a standard  rectangle, sometimes it is an unexpected shape but they seem to work really well. I like the way Wilson presents landscapes in her work. She doesn't really show them as they are she tends to turn them into a repre...

 I chose to look at Hannah Whitaker because I really like her style, I know here work doesn't relate to mine exactly however there are a few similar elements. She uses a lot of repeat patterns and her work looks quite abstract and collaged. She uses a lot of shapes and patters with parts of the human body involved.  I really like the colours in her work some are mainly black and white with pops of colour and others have subtle hues running through. I think her way of working is really interesting as well, Whitaker shoots on 4x5 film and then cuts out shapes and places them into the camera. Rather then adding the shapes after she engrains them during the capturing process. In most of her work she uses the human body - usually female - and turns it quite abstract, removing parts of it or only including one specific element for example arms. For me I like to take landscapes and turn them into something else, whether that be a more abstract landscape or a completely new scene. I l...

https://www.eyeem.com/blog/collage-photography

 I decided to read this as it was an exhibition review but most of the work was based around surrealism. Again this gave me an insight into the ideas behind surrealism and some artists whose work is categorised here. It was interesting to read about the different types of work that were classed as surrealism. 

 I am making this list of books I wan too look at that are not available on the library website. Hopefully when I get back to Manchester I will be able to take them out. Utopia/dystopia: construction and destruction in photography and collage - Graham Bader and Yasufumi Nakamori Photography Is Magic - Charlotte Cotton Edge of a dream: utopia, landscape & contemporary photography - Simryn Gill

I read the chapter on surrealism and photography because when i started to look into making these collaged landscapes I was researching surrealism collages and photography so I thought this chapter would help me in finding out more about it.

Richard Long is an artist that I have looked a few times. I like his work because it feels as though it is a journey. He is one person who manages to make marks on the earth just by simply walking. I enjoy the process he goes through and the way he photographs his end results. He changes the way a landscape looks by himself. I like the way he is described as a land artist. The reason I have chosen to look at Long is because he changes the land and turns it into something new for people to look at. I think that is what I am trying to do, I am taking places and rearranging them into a new place. I think another reason why I like Longs work so much is because the act of walking is so simple yet creates such a big impact on the landscape. His work takes place in the landscape and I love the way it is so simple yet so effective I feel like it makes you realise just how much impact one person can have. His work related a lot to the ideas i was looking at in my dust project however I am think...

 Aliki Braine is an artist who physically manipulates her photos. The titles of her different series are: Cut & Scattered, Cut & Rotated, Folded, Stickered, Punched and Inked. She explains what she has done to each set of photos through the title of the series.  Braine uses various techniques to manipulate her work, she cuts parts out of negatives then scans the cut outs and prints them. These cut outs are all circular as if they had been holed punched, she then scatters them and wherever they land is how they are laid out.  In another series she cuts a circle out of the middle of the image and rotates it so that it is the other way around to the rest of the image. Although this idea seems simple the outcomes are still very interesting. In other work she creates black and white photographs from folded negatives, I really like this work, I enjoy things with physical manipulation and layers to the processes that have been involved. It changes the way that the origin...

I read this chapter in the book because it talks about landscape photography as a genre and as that is going to be the subject of my work I thought it would be relevant and useful to look at. There are some landscape photographers mentioned however it also talks about the aesthetics and composition techniques that are usually used in landscape photography.  

I was out walking my dog the other day and I came across a real life perspective/illusion situation that I found interesting. I was walking through some woods and there was a wall on the edge of the wood. In this photo it looks like the wall carries on as if there is no gap in it. However, the wall does have a gap in it you just have to be looking at it from a different perspective to see it. I thought this was quite interesting and fit quite well with my work, I want my work to look different from different perspectives but make sense from one point of view. At the moment I'm not sure show ambitious this is however this is kind of an idea of a starting point of where I want to take my work.

I have decided to look at Escher as his pieces of work are all illusions and perspective plays a big part. I like this idea of turning my work into illusions, more in the sense that you feel as though you're looking at a real place when it is actually just a collage of photos of different places. However I feel as though Escher is a good artist to look at as his illusions are amazing. All of his work is so detailed and I like the way that you can look at his work for ages and not get bored, you're always trying to figure it out or discovering something new. You can view his work from multiple perspectives. The illusion in my work will come from the fact that people are looking at these beautiful scenes thinking that they would like to visit somewhere like that but then feeling slightly cheated because it isn't real. I wonder if this could be related to the ides behind the uncanny slightly? Eschews work is really fun to look at and you could spend a long time looking at it, ...