#degreework

[writtleart]

Day 2 of the build and we're already into the third room! Powering through! #exhibition #exhibitionbuild #build #building #degreework #degreeshow #university #comtemporary #contemporaryart #performanceart #artschool #art #teamwork #team #boards

[ghostofatree]

This dreadful thing was the last of the suite of nightmare cold-rolled steel, scaff and canvas objects. It was important you me that this work was about deliberate, calculating mass-murder rather than something like a frenzied hate-crime Lynch mob -so the visual language had to be austere, cold and machined. A tutor had described this set as like “nazi cash points”. This one was a giant industrial flower-press to fit a thousand flowers. I had hit in these stereotypical fey and delicate ideas like flower-pressing and butterfly collections etc to riff on abusive presentations of ideas around gay men as somehow flimsy or effete. A flower-press preserves one flower by flattening the liquids out of it thereby delaying any decay. It is a delicate procedure. This one was different. It would use industrial pressure to crush 1000 flowers (picked for me from local wasteland by helpful second years) so representing a local randomly selected sample population, destroyed and crushed. I left a shock proof glass window (like the nazis had in the doors of gas chambers). What was happening could be seen but most was hidden. The flower sap dripped out the sides and immediately rusted the cold-rolled steel, causing blood like puddles around it. The meanings of this industrial scale murder where obvious and it lived in sketchbook alongside notes about the pink triangle, holocaust, homocaust and deliberate lack of AIDS research. Other images included here show it’s placing in the installation and stages of development. #queerartistsofinstagram #queerart #queerartist #degreeshow #degreework #sculpture #aidscrisis #industrial #flowerpress #steel #homocaust #massmurder (at Stoke-on-Trent) https://www.instagram.com/p/CXJwFuhsnio/?utm_medium=tumblr

[ghostofatree]

Over the last few months I’ve been archiving degree sketchbooks that acted as a bubbling pot of ideas and images that were heading toward something. I wasn’t sure what that would be. Of many doodles and subconscious combinations of very dark images some were moving forward. I had analysed their beginnings and pushed them forward into the proposal drawings that redeemed my floundering second year and bought me access to third year. The general themes were of a level of anger that the AIDS crisis was ripping through my community and many hundreds of thousands were dying but Reagan and Thatcher were happy to sit back and let that happen. We were an unloved and problematic minority and if a virus could decimate us why would the hard right lift a finger to stop that? The first of the drawings here was the one of them which never came to fruition. It was an image of some sort of imagined hospital disposal unit for the safe disposal of tainted or unwanted flesh. The broken hospital radio we had found in an urbex trip to the abandoned old Royal Hospital had become, for me, a symbol of crying out to god for help but being ignored. Although this piece was never made I used that radio element in later work. The “meat chute” would lead directly down to the furnace - (Hell) and could be wiped clean for health and safety. The front of it was based on a church tabernacle - (more in that idea to come). Also here were a set of research photos to try to accumulate elements of the look I was interested in -such as the austere Royal Mail frontage of the Stoke depot; the meat hooks in the uni kitchens; a clamp for bikes (which I recognised as for holding the wrist of a martyr) and the screen wash bay in the print room - which I had labeled simply “punishment trough”. This was dark work indeed. #degreeshow #degreework #artstudent #aidscrisis #deliberate #cull #murder #meatchute #coldrolledsteel #outfromthedepths #queerartistsofinstagram #queerartist #proposalideas #research #culmination #horror #hell #planningdrawings (at Stoke-on-Trent) https://www.instagram.com/p/CW0rxGeMfQj/?utm_medium=tumblr

[ghostofatree]

The penultimate set from the skinhead images photoshoot went a little deeper into relationships and power with images implying issues like dominance, protection, ownership, strong allegiance or attachment, a tongue-in-cheek power metaphor of a pissing contest and the possibility of union and fraternity on an equal footing. Some of these felt more successful than others but the first image was the only one that was actually exhibited from these. #artdegree #degreework #finished #queerart #queerartist #queerartistsofinstagram #queerskinhead #queerskins #photoshoot #identity #bootsandbracesdontmakearacist #powerrelations (at Toxteth, L8) https://www.instagram.com/p/CWV9HpAMELP/?utm_medium=tumblr

[ghostofatree]

Making masks led me into other “trophy objects” to suggest certain experiences. The “Emotional Baggage” series was also around this time (although I was far from finished with masks). The bag, case or backpack is worn close to the body and can contain secrets. It said something to me about privacy and even shame and identity. Bags became symbols like portable closets. The three shown here suggested first a boy in his early teens struggling with understanding his sexuality without role models. This was the situation I had been in so, of course, this one is more autobiographical. The bag is pinned to the wall like a crucified body and the zip is pulled open at the bottom revealing darkness and emptiness inside. The opening suggests an ambiguous bodily opening. The style of bag deliberately referenced the period of time when I grew up and the world was almost devoid of gay images that a child might understand as positive, hopeful or even recognisable. The second was called “Smile Smile Smile”, (from the First World War song Pack up Your Troubles in your Old Kit Bag). This was old military baggage splayed open like a tanned hide. Again the shape was vaguely bodily and reminded me of the song Tender Comrade by Bragg. I had read about a very early gay poetry group called The Uranians and these ideas were starting to overlap for me. Finally was the finished outcome for the briefcase object, again splayed open and the traditionally respectable black leather had become somehow fetishised by the addition of a pierced nipple. The failed and rusted lock became a navel and the handle became a small male genital on display. This was from the story of the businessman commuter who’s bag had fallen open on a crowded train revealing his paperwork and various erotic magazines. Although by the content he was apparently straight the compartment burst into laughter and he, mortified got off at the next stop. I wasn’t there to witness it but thought at the time how small, ashamed and devastated he must have felt to suddenly be revealed in front of strangers. #degreework #wallbased #assemblage #sculpture #queerart #queerartist #shame #privacy #closet #emotionalbaggage #bags (at Stoke-on-Trent) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUIKdxZM7rl/?utm_medium=tumblr

[ghostofatree]

The masks were not only gas- masks but were wider mask symbols. The gas-mask remained central but I played with other masks that suggested various (predominantly stereotypically male) identities and narratives. Previously, when the warlike gas-masks had kissed they gently let go of their masculine language and became the “fine childbearing hips” they were suggesting. The same was true when I combined two workmen’s masks into a couple; they playfully evolved into a bra. Of course no mask is male or female and many women would have worn gas-masks or dust masks but the triggers were designed to start a conversation. I enjoyed this sort of subversion of expected binaries back then but they are hopefully less subversive now. Since the 90s society’s understanding of gender constructs has, thank god, become massively more subtle and sophisticated but at the time this work seemed baffling to some (and even I was feeling my way in the dark to understand it based only on reading queer theory and gender theory and through liberating conversations with other LGBT folks). The other mask object here in image 2 and 3 was made in beaten lead. I used lead obviously because it is heavy and poisonous. Masks hide the actual identity and much can be hidden within that about how we feel about our deepest selves. To hide that also seemed heavy and toxic and deeply harmful to the one who’s identity is masked. Lead is a beautiful material to work with so I was quite happy with both these outcomes. #degreework #queerartist #queerart #masks #mask #identity #genderfluid #genderqueer #genderfuck #queertheory #nonbinary #gasmask (at Stoke-on-Trent) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUC52jesZxE/?utm_medium=tumblr

[silver-mint]

I’m finished my degree work! Goodbuy,art scchool!

Я завершила мою дипломную! Прощай,художка!

[wrmcc]

Connor from my final major project Out of Step | #pentax67 #filmisnotdead #filmphotography #shootfilm #ishootfilm #fujipro400h #fujifilm #analogphotography #6x7 #mediumformat #120film #filmisalive #finalmajor #degreework #ukhardcore #ukhc