Art Gecko

This blog follows my personal and artistic development during my three years at Plymouth University.

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Artist Statement

During the three years that I have been studying at Plymouth University I have endeavoured to base my practice on personal experience. Topics I have examined include; Racism and how people's perception of what constitutes racism has altered during my lifetime; motherhood and the security of the womb; the landscape of Dartmoor and the legends of this area and most recently, ageing and the menopause.

My practice manifests itself through surface based work in the main, with the occasional foray into photography, sculpture, collage and installation. As a mature student, I did not grow up with technology and find the application of it to my practice somewhat challenging, however I have had to overcome my innate fear of it in order to make my work digitally accessible.I had hoped to create an immersive spectatorship driven installation but with the advent of  The Lock-down, I decided to fall back on photography. My final piece involves a series of photographic portraits, which were inspired by the work of Diane Arbus, Annie Leibovitz and Richard Avedon, These portraits are accompanied by a recording of myself describing the symptoms of the menopause and how they affected me.

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As an extension to my final project, I made these drawings of some of the photographic portraits. I had thought of using these as part of my final piece but decided to use the photographs as they seem more convincing.

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These are the contact sheet of my photo shoots and the six portraits I chose for my final piece which is a power point slide show of these six images, fading in and out, which, in turn is accompanied by a recording of myself describing symptoms of the menopause and how they have affected me.

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These pages show my ideas for my revised final piece, thumbnails from my photo shoots and three artist studies on photographers, who, I hope, my own photographs reflect.

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Even though I had decided not to continue with the mannequin project, I still felt it necessary to ‘wrap it up’ and did so with research on assemblage and appropriation and an artist study. 

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With this turn of events and the coming to terms with the, very strange and worrying circumstances that now face us, I decided to put my plans for the mannequin to one side. The above pages describe how my final piece would have looked, in an ideal world.

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Then came the Coronavirus or Covid-19 and the Lock Down. These three pages record  my personal experience and thoughts o this unprecedented event and what effect it had on the menopausal symptoms I was experiencing. 

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At this point, I decided to research the different forms installation art can take and from Claire Bishop’s book ‘Installation Art’ discovered the four main types;- Dream Scene; Heightened Perception; Mimetic Engulfment and Activated Spectatorship.

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I had originally planned to create a sculpture which represented the way the menopause manifests itself in women. I intended to use a shop mannequin as the base, flesh it out with layers of bubble-wrap and silver foil, then cover it with a layer of oil-based clay. I was then going to add objects which would act as metaphors for the symptoms of the menopause. 

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During my research, it came to my notice how few representations of the aging, middle-aged, menopausal or post menopausal women there are in art. The exception to the rule is Beryl Cook who has painted these ladies time and again.

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To round off this section, I contemplated on how growing older and the effects of the menopause affects self-image: how I feel the need to cover the signs of aging and effects of menopause by ‘putting on a face’ before leaving the house. After posting this drawing on an art site on social media, I had lots of feedback from women saying how the image resonated with them.

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I spent a long time searching for artists who’s practice was based around the menopause but found very little, however I did find artists who had exhibited in exhibitions based around the menopause and these include:- Gabrielle Roberts-Dalton; Charlotte Morrison; Sarah Clark; Connie Flynn;Jo Stapleton and Elspeth Fraser.

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Pieces I made in response to my complentation of the menopause

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I researched symptoms of the menopause and what symptoms I am experiencing myself.

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My first artist study was of Antonio Finelli and his hyper-realistic portraits, to which I made my own response. I then examined how I can see the signs of aging in myself. 

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For my final year, I decided to base my studies and practice around a topic which is extremely personal to myself; aging and the menopause. I began by looking at Rembrandt’s tronies, paintings and drawings of his aging self and made a response by drawing myself from photographs taken through the years.