Spaces 2

A second attempt at the panoramic view effect, with editing of the composite images in photoshop. The effect is still uneven, due to the 90 degree angle at which the photographs were taken. In order to re-align the contents of the images, sections had to be resized and moved which left uneven white spaces, which I removed by cropping the image, removing the advantage of having the camera at 90 degrees.

Visual Communication: Conclusion

Visual Communication

"WE KNOW YOU KNOW NOTHING / SIT DOWN SHUT UP & BUY MORE SHIT"

The initial impetus for this project came from our summer project, and our chosen subject of landscape from the options given to us in the original brief (playground, docks, woodland etc). My choice for the summer project whoever ended up becoming fairly irrelevant to this project, as through free-assocation I began to think more about the circumstances surrounding the summer project rather than the project itself. When the brief was sent out to students, I was still in full time employment, working for a large firm of conveyancers (property lawyers), a job that I was in a great hurry to leave and was deeply unhappy with. The initial thoughts about the summer project that I was putting down on paper were largely unemotive and fairly typical, mainly to do with architecture and as such as I was straining to conjure anything of any real interest to develop upon. I am very much interested in architecture, space and the significance of our presence in specific environments, but I found the summer project brief to be fairly limiting with regards to this and I was struggling to make each area connect. At this point, I began to think more about my time in employment, as a loose connection to the summer project, and very quickly thoughts and feelings began to surface.

The feelings underpinning most of what I wrote down were very negative. I felt deep frustration with the job, with how my time there ended, and with particular personalities in the organisation that I felt made my life more difficult or less enjoyable outside of work. There were factors about the job that affected my relationships with other people, and my physical and mental wellbeing. I felt great resentment and hostility, and although the feelings being summoned were thoroughly negative, there was a sense of righteous anger and satisfaction in bringing it up and writing it all down, itself not a characteristic that I am comfortable with in others and subsequently much less so in myself. I would rather move forwards and allow positive things to come to me instead of dwelling purposely on negative feelings and experiences.

I often find myself in great dismay at the current state of politics in the world at large, with how companies large and small treat their staff and exploit people's needs and fears. Politicians lie and mislead, scheme and cheat, and we are now in a situation in this country where we are effectively powerless to stop them – when the votes of so many became worthless, because no matter what is said or how much protestation might occur, the machine keeps on rolling forwards regardless, stripping us of all the support systems we rely upon, to the point where our human rights are at risk. This dismay and anger that I feel towards these groups extends furthermore to those that might try and push me in one direction or another to suit themselves, and this is the central driving point in the work that I have produced in this project.

The original phrase that was the focal point for the project was "We Know You Know Nothing", implying complicit ignorance, a patronising acknowledgement of weakness in the face of authority, a sense of resignation to our fate as subservients, and the idiocy of beurocracy. I worked on several images with variations on orientation and emphasis, as well as overall placement and repetition, with an interesting variety of results.

RESEARCH:

See also polish film posters comparison

EXPLOITATION, CENSORSHIP AND HYSTERIA

I have long had an interest in censorship, particularly with regards to cinema, and so as a result I have often come across exploitation cinema as a point of interest. My view of censorship is that it is a failure for audience and art to relate in an even enough ratio, for whatever reason, whether it's because of moral outrage or for political reasons, or both. It is by definition a fluid state – what may have been indecent or considered damaging fifty years ago may not be considered the same way now, or vice versa. Social standards shift and change over time, and although some notions tend to stay fairly constant (child cruelty for example), issues of racism, sexism, homophobia and acceptable images of violence have all changed dramatically in the last century. What makes work so objectional that we are not to be allowed to view it, an arbitrary decision made by those in power supposedly on our behalf – indeed, who has the right to choose for any of us what we can and cannot see, listen to or read, under the proviso that it be for our own protection? Often, work is censored or attempts are made to restrict access to material out of the supposed fear that it might incite violent behaviour, but evidence for such claims is usually anecdotal at best, or outright fabricated at worst. In Britain, we have the 1984 Video Recordings Act solely because of the moral outrage that came about as a result of Christian pressure groups such as the Festival of Light or career-oriented Conservative politicians and high-ranking police.

In America in the 1980's, there was considerable efforts made by Christian-right groups such as the Parents Music Resource Centre (led by Tipper Gore, wife of Al Gore) to effectively ban works by forcing record labels to use '"Parental Advisory" stickers, which in turn would blacklist certain recordings from major retailers, such as Wal-Mart. This wide-range blacklisting could effectively prevent a release from seeing the light of day, such is the market dominance of these companies. The "Parental Advisory" sticker itself has absolutely no legal power and the PMRC had no legislative powers whatsoever. The PMRC of course would not admit to seeking to ban artists, only to prevent objectionable material falling into the hands of impressionable youth, but their actions directly limited the accessibility of these works for adults, and indrectly affected the freedom for artists to speak freely with their music. Strongly political groups such as the Dead Kennedy's, as well as rap groups such as N.W.A, Public Enemy and 2 Live Crew with violent and/or sexual themes in their lyrics, were significant targets. Heavy metal bands such as Judas Priest, Twisted Sister, Venom and Black Sabbath were targeted for violent, sexual or supposedly satanic themes, amid an air of so-called 'satanic panic' that was a popular topic for TV chat shows at the time, and well into the 1990's. Such 'satanic panic' is also largely responsible for the infamous case of the 'West Memphis Three', three teenagers imprisoned for the murder of three eight year-old boys in 1994, on circumstancial evidence including owning black t shirts, listening to Metallica and being interested in the occult. The three have recently been released from prison after eighteen years, as part of a bizarre plea deal. One of the three, Damien Echols, was on death row. All three are continuing to try and clear their names.

The power of censorship, hysteria and manipulation of public opinion have influenced the themes in my work for this project. Coercion, exploitation and control are themes that deeply bother me, and I look to explore these issues more in the future.

V1-V3 are variations on the same visual motif, with the image emphasising the authoritarian element of the theme, with the instruction to be silent as demonstrated with the 'hushing' silhouette. The variations on text produce a variety of different readings of the same basic sentence, with V1 implying dual levels of ignorance, with V2 emphasising the word 'know' as a constant whilst all the other elements gradually fade to obscurity, which is a direct counter-message to V1. V3 is or less a reworking of the same principle used in V1, except with the text kept closer together and emboldened for greater emphasis.

V4 stands out from all the other designs as a considerably more simplistic approach, relying purely on the boldness of the text to make it's impact. The central feature dominating over all else is the abbreviation NDA, which stands for "Non Disclosure Agreement", a direct reference to events at my place of employment where staff were forced to agree not to disclose information about the company and it's dealings with other third parties. There was no choice in the matter, and if staff refused then it would likely affect their continued employment there. I felt this was pure coercion in a manner that, whilst fairly innocuous there (I for one did not much care at all about the companies interests, as their interests never did represent my own at any point beyond that they continued to pay me), the principle of a NDA and the power which it grants an employer or other party over an individual is frightening to me as a concept. Furthermore, by signing such an agreement, you are signing yourself over to third parties who have next to no concern for your interests.

The NDA motif did not remain in the design past this point, as it was too vague a term to adequately convey the messages I wanted to put across, however I was pleased with the absolute nature of the black-on-black text against white background – it does create a sense of strong pressure.

V5 is a development on the idea of the 'hush' motif, and was created by first all photographing myself, then using a graphics tablet in photoshop to trace over the key lines and creating a basic outline on which to add colour. The colour scheme chosen was design to create reasonably high contrast, the use of red, white and blue for the text (hastily 'scratched' into place, again with a graphics tablet) conjuring nationalistic themes and subsequently, government.

The red lines placed over the mouth and eyes emphasise the 'hush' motif further, but do not reappear as I feel this lessens the authoritarian element and again hints at it being more responsive to authoritarianism instead. The entire purpose of the piece is for it to be an affront, to be abrasive and objectional in as far as to be putting people 'in their place'.

V6 shows the introduction of the second phrase, "SIT DOWN SHUT UP & BUY MORE SHIT". I wanted to use this text boldly to be a direct attack, an order and an attempt at pushing people down. The line itself is loosely drawn from an anecdote by Henry Rollins, taken from one of his 'spoken word' performances, where he is discussing the possible benefit of there being an electronic notice on a plane, similar to a "no smoking" or 'fasten your seatbelt" sign, instead saying "sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up", the context being that trying to board an aircraft full of bumbling American tourists (Rollins himself is American but often critical of American culture) is a particularly unpleasant experience.

The design itself is tighter and also includes a tagline, like you might find on food advertising. This was meant to be sardonic, but again ultimately I felt it undercut the overall impression that I was trying to create, so I did not use it again.

The vertical alignment of the text carried through into what would become the final version of this piece, with the text rolling down the right side of the page, however in quite a modified form ultimately. The original phrase, "We Know You Know...", although absent in this design, comes back in another version after being tested again in a variety of orientations. I wanted to create a kind of logo, something symbolic of a possible order of rule or authority, that summarised all the of main facets of the design (superiority, silence, confusion).

The logo would find itself used in conjuction with the other phrase, sharing the space with a variety of shapes and colour blocks, as well as the subtle inclusion of one other element, a combination of a tracing of a photograph of workers in a supermarket bakery (the tracing and subsuqent colourisation creating a rather ghoulish effect) with a portion of the logo design repeated in triplicate, to enforce the idea that workers are subservient to the rule. With the colour scheme being limited to green, red and black, the image had to be fairly carefully manipulated to fit in relatively unnoticed, and sits inside a block of colour to the top of the design.

I wanted the piece to be uncomfortable and for a while I was at risk of making things too symetrical, too much of a straightforward piece of graphic design, which then led on to the slight skewing of the vertical text, the inversion of part of the text toward the bottom, and the uneven blocks of colour inversely interacting with each other, leading downwards. Finally, I added a high-resolution scan of a test print I did into my journal of the words 'buy' and 'shit, and used it as a background layer to add a greater sense of texture, again to make it less comfortable and less like a straightforward piece of graphic design. This test page was from four similar pages, and was done to see if I could use print as a means of achieving the uneven effect I wanted. For some while I was considering the use of screenprinting, but with the addition now of the extra layer of the scanned page, this would not ultimately give me the control required to replicate the image as precisely as the source material dictates. Instead, I am taking the Photoshop file to a printers to reproduce at full-scale (around A1/A2 size, in length at least).

I produced a second piece for comparison, this time using more of a deliberate sense of symmetry but re-using the background image again to create the uneven texture. I feel it is less successful but this also serves to illustrate the ways in which the first piece succeeds instead. The high contrast and high resolution of the background image however is quite dramatic and in using high resolution scans I have noticed great potential for creating texture for further digital works out of analogue creations.

Fibre Arts

In our second fibre arts session, we began with an exhaustive list of artists who work in textiles, both in 3D and more two-dimensional styles, under the umbrella term of fibre arts. Of these, the following caught my attention in particular:

Sheila Pepe
Janet Echelman
Susie MacMurray
Shelley Rhodes
Caroline Bartlett
Michael Brennand Wood
Ma Ke


More on these later.

The remainder of the session was almost entirely practical, with the aim to try out and experiment with a variety of different techniques using a sewing machine, an embellisher, dyes, 'stitch and reveal'. I spent a considerable amount of time with the sewing machines, as I have never used them before and I found them intriguing. It took me some time to get to grips with the basics of the machine, and I wanted to practise more so I spent perhaps more time on the machines than was intended. As such, of the pieces I produced, most were made with the use of the sewing machine.

Stitching and folding

Folding with stitch

Stitch and reveal

Stitch gauze over wool thread, onto white material (1/2)

Additional stitches to hold over the thread, and keep it in place, and also to segment the fabric into cubes (2/2)

Wax relief onto fabric, with dyes washed over the fabric (high resolution scan). Wax was rubbed onto the fabric over  various shapes, as well as being rubbed freehand onto the material.

Fibre Arts

The first session of our fibre arts block was a little confusing, as it actually involved virtually no work with fibre arts, and our brief wasn't supplied on the day. We began by working on a similar exercise to what we did in the Fine Art block, early on, with drawing items in boxes, however despite my initial apprehension, this turned out to be a much more relaxed process than before. The items included a variety of shapes and textures, and the emphasis this time was not on detail and accuracy, but simply reproducing the shapes quickly. This ended up being quite liberating and I was able to be quite gestural and loose with the representation. We repeated this exercise several times, rotating the materials we were drawing as well as the materials we were drawing with. We began with graphite, and moved onto some less conventional means, including taping two pencils together in an effort to reduce control, which provided some interesting results. We also used Berol markers, with added water applied by brush to disperse the ink in a manner similar to watercolour paints, and this is a technique I want to try out more as the effects were interesting and very easy and fast to implement. We used indian ink, applied with skewers and also brushes, which is also something I would like to use more, perhaps in other ways.

After a while we had produced several different drawings, on a variety of types of paper, and we then were asked to create a collage of sorts out of the drawings, with the option of cutting and re-aligning the pieces. I decided to do this with all my drawings, feeling that the direction the work was heading in at the time was not overly engaging me, and that I would perhaps find more interesting results if I went further into abstraction. I arranged the pieces in such a way as to try to follow some some curves and lines throughout. I used sticky labels to hold pieces together temporarily, as I threaded through the outlines of the pieces straight onto an A2 sized piece of paper, rather than piece the work together first and then apply to paper later. At first, the needle I was using was too broad and it proved extremely difficult (and painful at times) to penetrate two or three layers of paper at once, and after a while I switched to a smaller, sharper needle which was easier to manipulate, however I managed to scratch and poke my fingers multiple times in the process. This has been the most physically painful unit so far.

Life drawing

Today's session was a little bit frustrating as I have been feeling my limitations in drawing coming to the fore gradually over time as the course progresses. I think the heart of it lies in my lack of practise of measurement, and my impatience. I know that I need to spend the time on the initial stages, and in order to do that I need to relax and become more comfortable with that stage. Working gesturally is my preferred method, and I need to find the harmony between gestural drawing and the more 'academic' notion of measurement.

Effectively unfinished, the lower half of the drawing is underdeveloped, but with attention to detail  increased in the top half of the drawing.

On the positive side however, I spent an inordinate amount of time on this piece working on the area of the face and tone of the skin, and so far it is probably my best rendition of this part of the models anatomy. The drawing still doesn't 'look like' the model as much as I would like, but it's steadily approaching that point.

Quick drawings with an eye to working tone around the shape of the figure, however for me there wasn't enough time available to really develop these drawings as much as I would like. On the whole I do not like these drawings.

More of an attempt at incorporating background into the composition, this is also one of the only drawings so far where I have successfully kept the whole model in frame and also kept proportions reasonably accurate as well. There is a great difficulty in avoiding 'stunting' the image, shortening or widing perspective beyond recognition.

Spaces

Home working space

Click for higher resolution version.

This is an experiment in exploring a space from one focal point, in high resolution so the image can be explored in detail. Being a dense, small environment, there is a great deal of information embedded into the various areas of the image. The blogger.com uploader however seems to have automatically reduced the size of the image, which is disappointing, so I will have to find some alternative means of hosting it the image so it can be viewed. Ideally this would be printed onto large paper anyway.

This was done quickly, and without a tripod, and so the image composition is rough and not as precise as it could be. I will do another attempt later using a tripod, under stricter conditions. Hopefully this will yield better results, but as an experiment I feel this demonstrates what it is I am trying to convey at least adequately.

Visual Communication: Contextual studies

Film poster comparisons: American promotional artwork and expressionist posters designed for Polish market

Posters 1-4: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest / Apocalypse Now / The Shining / The Elephant Man - Leszek Zebrowski (b. 1950)

Zebrowski’s work serves the same purpose as the traditional American style film posters that we are more familiar with, in so much as communicating to the prospective audience the key details about the film, such as thematic tone, cast and/or director, but with considerable artistic license to interpret the film’s less immediately definable qualities to create an advertisement that taps into a part of the film that is more part of it’s structure, or ‘DNA’. For instance, there is a significant thematic difference between the two posters for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with the American poster showing Jack Nicholsons’ character smiling and in conjunction with the bubbly, uneven typeface, audiences might expect a comedy, or at least a comedic take on a more serious topic. The film itself has humour within it, but it is always in the context of characters with serious psychological problems and there is tragedy and injustice deeply woven into the story that is not illustrated by the poster. Zebrowski’s poster, on the other hand, directly references one of these tragic moments towards the end of the film, but this would only be obvious to someone already familiar with that scene, and by the expressionistic nature of the poster you can initially only sense at the tone of the film, without having details revealed. His chosen typeface also is loose and subtle in it’s presentation, coming secondary almost to the image itself, which is a recurring element in his poster work.

With the American poster of Apocalypse Now, there is a fairly expressionistic affectation already present, and the typeface illustrates also a loose, rough characteristic that matches with the film’s themes. Being set within the Vietnam war, and being a sort of travelogue of  the horrors of war, and of madness, the film’s themes are well represented. Zebrowski’s take is in comparison more vibrant and less depressive, with bright red as the background tone and similarly to the American poster, Marlon Brando’s face appears centrally, but Zebrowski illustrates more about the character of Kurtz and his insanity, showing him as fragmented as if by an explosion of artillery.

The typeface Zebrowski uses is likewise colourful and bold, with attentuation to the first letter of each word which serves to draw your attention and the teal hue contrasts clearly with the pinks and reds.

For The Shining, the original poster is representing just one specific scene, broken into two key shots, with a tagline present above to emphasise the films potency and success in America. I believe although I am not certain that this poster was for the UK market, so the phrase serves to indicate the presence of something monumental arriving on our shores. In other ways, the poster is fairly straightforward, with black and white used for text and background inversely and the typeface used being fairly simplistic, with alternative upper and lower case letters (upper case all except for the two uses of ‘i’). The first half ‘The Shining’ is smaller, to emphasise the word ‘Shining’. Zebrowski’s take on the film draws upon the same scene, which is perhaps the most famous scene in a film that has drawn reference and pastiche many times since it’s release in 1980, but amusingly emphasises and exaggerates the elasticity of Shelley Duvall’s distinct facial features, and also her pallid skin tones as she appears in the film, reminding us of The Scream by Munch. The background is also pale, but with contrasting black lines emanating from the shape of Duvall’s head again further emphasising her expression and presence. I believe this is a non-too subtle comment on her performance in the film, which could be regarded as over the top (indeed, every performance in the film is excitable and exaggerated, as you can see from Jack Nicholson’s expression in the other poster). Her character Wendy serves as a point of irritation for Nicholsons’ Jack, and in that sense it is inspired casting, as she irritates the audience just as effectively.

With David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, the differences between posters become more significant. Lynch’s film is in itself a fairly expressionistic telling of the story of John Merrick, born with terrible disfigurements that alienate him from Victorian society and unfortunately hide his sensitivity and intelligence from view as well as a result. The film is black and white, and like Lynch’s Eraserhead before it, is full of high contrast and striking cinematography and oppressive and claustrophobic environments. The typeface used somehow doesn’t quite match the themes, and the inclusion of a key line of dialogue with additional emphasis undoes some of the great subtlety in John Hurts characterisation of John Merrick in the film. This is more likely symptomatic of studio interference or at least bland traditionalism within the advertisement realm of cinema at the time, and it is unlikely that a film’s creator get’s a great deal of influence on how a film is marketed, and the more money a studio invests in a film’s production the less control a director has on this area. Zebrowski takes a much more expressionistic approach to the film’s subject matter, choosing to ignore the details so much of John Merrick’s features, and instead reinterpreting them in his own way so as to emphasise the emotional content without the need for text to explain it. The oversized teardrops emerging from a wide horizontal line where the eyes should be appears to resemble more a cliff face or a break in a plaster wall than a normal healthy face. This of course perfectly represents the key point of Merrick’s plight, but not in a directly representational way.

Poster 5: Mulholland Drive (2 posters) - Sława Harasymowicz

The French film poster for Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is one of several interesting interpretations to choose from for this film, and I selected this one in particular because there are a variety of different elements that are ripe for comment. Thematically the film itself is dreamlike, abstract and open to interpretation in a variety of ways and in many ways is ‘about’ Hollywood - Hollywood films and their conventions, as well as the romance surrounding the idea of Hollywood and the film business as a whole. The poster itself is visually rich, with high contrast and deep shadows, creating a sense of mystery and intrigue surrounding the two central female characters. In the lower-right third of the frame there is an image referencing one of the more bizarre sequences, itself likely alluding to Lynch’s own Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me, keeping in again with the motif within Mulholland Drive of referencing the genetic structure of film and TV within our collective subconcious. There is much to be said about this film. The typeface and use of text in general highlights it’s accolades and awards, but allow the images themselves to dominate the impression the poster will make on the observer.

Sława Harasymowicz’s two posters for Mulholland Drive reference scenes and themes from the film respectively - the first an emotionally charged sequence inside an old theatre in the middle of the night, the second the intimate relatonship between the two lead characters (although this is a misnomer as throughout the film, characters, roles and roles within relationships switch around repeatedly). Stylistically the posters are fairly simplistic, with the first poster recreating the stage and the body of the singer in stark contrast to each other, the singer in monochrome and the curtains in deep red, as it appears in the film. The second poster is more abstract, showing the two leads lying next to each other, one asleep, one intently awake, here face cut off as if wearing a mask by silhouettes of the two characters facing each other as if to kiss. There is separation between the characters (an important theme in the film) and also a separation in foreground and background that is interesting and reminiscent of MC Escher’s work

Poster 6: Kill Bill Volume 1 - Jacek Rudzki

The standard poster design for this film in the international markets doesn’t vary a great deal, and is strikingly simple and effective in it’s design. The use of yellow and black is reminiscent of warning signs, and of wasps and other harmful things, and the outfit of Uma Thurman appears almost like camouflage against the yellow and black backdrop of the post. The red of the blood splatter following the line of the sword also provides dramatic contrast, and leaves no doubt as to what the film is about. The type face is no more subtle - strong, bold black text, combined with the plain alliteration of the title, really rams home the stylistic intent of the film. The film itself contains a lot more stylistic references to a wide variety of sources, ranging from 1970’s exploitation films to contemporary Japanese animation, perhaps somewhat messily juxtaposed, and this isn’t referenced in the post so much.

Rudzki’s poster takes the simplicity of the international poster and perfects it, keeping the colour sheme of red and yellow, but removing all details, reducing it to a singular defining feature, again taking the ‘heart’ of the film and summarising it for prospective audiences or people who already know the film and know the significance. The relevant information about the film is condensed into the shape of a sword, with the film’s title standing out as the hilt and the Miramax logo forming the base of the sword as it it curves downards in a distinctive fashion. There is little chance that an observer would not know immediately that swords play an important role in this film, whereas in the international poster, the sword is an addendum to Uma Thurman’s leading heroine, more of a tool than a character in it’s own right.

Poster 7: The Empire Strikes Back  - Miroslaw Lakomski

The film posters of the Star Wars film series are particularly distinctive and share a common style with other films of the period, namely those involving George Lucas and/or Steven Spielberg (Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T, etc), and are typically of a realistic painting style blending various leading characters and locales from the film into one large collage, again summarising what to expect from the film as a whole. The film itself is considered the darkest of the series, thematically, and as such the poster follows suit, illustrating the icy scenes and darkness of the films’ villain blending into outer space. The entire series of films has thematic continuity in it’s presentation, namely in the design of the opening titles and also on the titles of the film posters, reinforcing the Star Wars brand.

The poster by Lakomski follows the style of posters he designed for other Lucas/Spielberg films at the time, appearing to mix prints and spray paints to create bold, distinctive designs that directly reference some of the film’s most memorable moments. In this instance, the items featured are a secondary character and a weapon of war, amidst a blurry impression of space and with a variety of coloured shapes in lines at various points across the poster. Notably, the films’ signature title design is absent, and no attempt has been made to replicate it, leaving only a plain bold Polish translation above a smaller English version of the title. The poster is more functional in this respect than some of the others, but is interesting in it’s distinctiveness and alternative focus in comparison to the international poster.

Jenny Saville

Through the first four sessions of life drawing that we have had so far, and from having not done a great deal of figure drawing before the beginning of this course, I have been discovering a great deal about my own inherent leanings in this particular area. The mode that tends to be the most comfortable and expressive for me is with gestural drawing, making strong and loose marks, often repeatedly for emphasis or also to remove emphasis by making things indistinct (there is a balance with this that I am still trying to perfect, as I can often overwork my drawings at this stage). Of the drawings that I have been making, those that I am most interested in after the fact tend to be raw, perhaps aggressive. With hindsight this makes sense to me as this is reflected in a lot of my tastes in other media, notably film and music, be it the bio-mechanical ultra-violence of Shinya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo or the oppressive, claustrophobic sound-scape's of Neurosis' Times of Grace album. There is a link between all these elements for me that goes some way to interpreting how I view the world on a subconscious level.

Jenny Saville's paintings are depictions of the reality of flesh, and more importantly they are direct links to our own complicated feelings about our own bodies, both on a personal level and also as a society. There is distortion through the choices of angles uses to view the figure, distortion through physical contortion in some cases, emphasising the sense of almost fundamental discomfort of existing in the body being portrayed. In the above painting "Strategy (South Face/Front Face/North Face)", the chosen angle is used to highlight and even emphasise the obesity of the figure, further drawn out by the choice of views available, providing the observer with every single detail of that specific facet of the figure. In each segment, the figure is looking directly at the observer, not allowing herself to be dehumanised in the otherwise fairly mechanical manner in which she is being presented.

Although not the most extreme example of Saville's style of painting, this piece does serve well to demonstrate her primary concerns, that of flesh as an agent of life and also death. Her work reeks of mortality in it's various stages, and is strikingly vivid and physical. Interestingly, the 'North' and 'South' segments are comparitively duller in tone compared to the 'Front' segment, which almost glows.

"Continuum" shows more clearly the aggressive nature of flesh that she more commonly presents, her palette emphasises the blood under the skin, particularly in the lips, with the gestural nature of her markings leaving some of the finer details of the figure to the imagination - does the child have a birthmark, or is he merely flushed? There is a suggestion perhaps of physical trauma, or at least a heightened state of emotion.

Jenny Saville's own self-portraits are particularly revealing as to her rationale for her work in general. Again her usual motifs of the significance of flesh, of curves and weight, are prevalent, this time with additional neuroses regarding her own issues with her body. She has drawn lines on her own body, reminiscent of contours of a landscape as you would find on a topographic map, and also similar to the lines used by plastic surgeons when marking out their incisions. Saville spent some time early in her career observing plastic surgeons at work, and this again only highlights the significance of body dysmorphia as a central theme. There are complicated feelings being demonstrated regarding her own body, and she is confronting that in all of her work by examining the bodies of others, alive and dead, human and animal, and in her most interesting work, managing to create a sense of a juxtaposition of all four states at once.

Visual Communication

Following on from the previous days experiences, I began to play more with the idea of a 'Non Disclosure Agreement' and expand into ideas of secrecy, bureaucracy and subservience, particularly in the working environment. In my time in my previous job I experienced a great deal of frustration and hypocrisy that infuriated me and directly affected my life outside of work, in so far as it affected my moods and happiness, making me less than great company on many occasions. This itself filled me with resentment for my employers, a large company with little respect for it's employee's or it's customers. I am under no illusions as to how this varies from company to company, particularly where profit is the bottom line. I had already experienced redundancy within this company and in order to not be made unemployed I had to take another position within the company that was truly mind-numbing and well below my skill-level. There was an absolute lack of mental stimulation and all attempts I made to progress into better roles were met with indifference or embarrassing failure, again leading to further feelings of resentment towards the business as a whole. Ultimately, the situation arose where I had decided to take the Foundation course, and I would need to change my working pattern to accommodate my studies, and so I requested to go part-time within my existing role, which my direct managers fully supported, but this was ultimately turned down by the company, despite my years of experience and hard work. I essentially had to choose the course, or the job, and I chose the course. I do not regret this at all, but I felt quite bitter for some time about the lack of appreciation for my work and experience. The decision to not allow me to go part-time was made by one person, based on his personal feelings regarding job-shares (which other teams not under his control were often using).

This experience started to directly feed into my work. The phrase 'Non Disclosure Agreement' became less significant and the phrase 'We Know You Know Nothing' arose, allowing me to experiment with wording and arrangement. I worked primarily onto tracing paper, using pre-prepared typeface sheets to create bold lettering by hand, and I then experimented with colour schemes using permanent marker to see how things contrasted with one another. It quickly became apparent to me that this project would be most likely leaning towards print or graphic design tools such as Photoshop, and I experimented with Photoshop primarily due to it's ease of use and accessibility.

Life drawing notes

We expanded upon our techniques learned last week, namely monocular measurement and introducing the concept of axis in the figure. We did three warm up drawings this time, on one sheet - I found these came together quite well, but this was no doubt aided by the fact I had a proper pencil to use this time, along with a purple pencil for marking out the geometry.

We went on to do one major drawing for the rest of the session, with one pose. I struggled in parts, finding myself overworking elements of the drawing which made it more difficult. To counter this, I decided to use extra space on the paper to focus on a smaller scale on some of the other parts of the figure, namely the head/top half of the torso, the left leg and foot, and left hand, as these were all parts that were either messy in my opinion, or had been otherwise neglected.

At this point it is becoming clear that my work is, at this stage but probably in a more fundamental way also, quite gestural and expressionistic, as opposed to being strictly precise. In the self-portrait sketches I have done in the last few days I have found my drawings 'coming together' more comfortably in this manner, as quick gestural drawings, and I am looking forward to transferring this to paint and other mediums in the future.

Visual Communication

We started a new unit today with Ian, concluding the fine art classes with Greg that we had over the last few weeks. The brief we were giving is pretty open ended and ultimately we can proceed as we wish, with the origin being the summer project, as with the other units in the diagnostic term.

The summer project for me did not yield a great deal of ideas that I found all that useful, and I began writing into my journal a number of ideas and phrases in a stream of conciousness sort of manner, few of which had a any kind of profound meaning for me. I filled a page with words, and as I went on I started thinking more about the events and feelings I was experiencing at the time the summer project was given to us. At the time, I was still working full-time in a job I did not enjoy, and as I started to develop this thought-process, there was something of a flood of feelings, mainly negative, that spilled onto the page. Later, I decided that this was a direction that would perhaps yield more interesting results than to directly follow the lead of the summer project itself.

Amongst the words and phrases I wrote down in the second half of this development period was the phrase 'Non Disclosure Agreement'. For me, this phrase has a variety of connotations and meanings beyond the literal, and I decided to expand specifically upon this phrase.

Thoughts and activities

The last few days outside of college haven't been as practical as I had anticipated they would be, although is mostly my own fault. I have, however, had a number of very in depth conversations about various ideas (not necessarily my own) and experiences recently. I have also been reflecting a great deal on my recent experiences and feelings coming out as a result. There has also been some experimentation in drawing which has been quite fruitful, and this is something I will develop further. Self portraiture is a novel experience for me, as I haven't attempted it before, at least not as far as I can remember. It's an awkward experience for most, as I think almost everyone will have some issues with their self image on one level or another, even if they are not necessarily aware of it. I'm no exception to this, but I found it a curious example of how much my attitudes have changed, with regards to how I view myself, and also how much my comfort boundaries have relaxed. There would have been a time where the idea of conjuring an image of myself from memory or imagination alone would be deeply uncomfortable and ultimately would result in an overly considered, contrived piece of work, if it resulted in anything at all. I place a lot of responsibility for this change on my experiences of late, namely studying again, leaving a soul-destroying job, and thinking more in general. It has all worked together to relax me emotionally, which for the most part has been joyous, but it has also resulted in one or two private outbursts, and feelings of anxiety almost to the point of a panic attack. I believe this to be the effect of shedding off years of layers, built up in order to deal with issues going back to my teenage years and younger, that have repressed my emotions to a lesser or greater extent, for the best part of ten years. As this repression is starting to fall away it is an exciting experience, but it has been described as symptomatic of post traumatic stress and so there is a great deal of fear and anxiety associated with all of it as well. I fully intend to try and utilise this, although my path for this is not clearly defined in my mind as of yet. The self-examination of the self portraiture however is a very significant place to start, at least for me.