This is the end.......My only friend....The End

And finally to the last term at LSAD. After all the trials and tribulations, the endless wailing in the middle of the night, the gnashing of teeth, pulling out of hair....all no more.

First there was the relief of the thesis submission.

And then the work kept rolling in .....

Large ,demonic, toes rising above us. A satirical attack on the way consumerism / capitalism focusses our view on the trivia of life.....whether it be stubble, spots, the way we smell etc etc Approximately 1/3 of the world population lives below the poverty line.....< 2$/day earnings while we in the 'developed' world wallow in our own grotesque over-indulgence.

More 'freaky' toes , again a slightly gothic , sexy and definitely way over the top depiction in the same manner as above. Colours evoke the darkness of the subject matter , juxtaposed against the ordinary mundane lampooning of the everyday foot.


Artistic Statement accompanying the degree show.

 

'This Candy Store of Ours.....'   and 'Kiss Kiss' . Anti - self -obsession ....with the miserable 0.5%
of our gdp to salve our conscience regarding the plight of  our fellow human beings, (Ignorance of their plight and our maintenance of this divide is on our screens each and every night.....), reflected in the pupils of the eyes ....maybe truly  'seeing' for the first time.

 

Notions that this problem is in our hands and not in the hands of democratic governments who stand idly by while technological progression generates more 'stuff' that we don't need to fuel more and more demand and therwefore production at the cost of the planet as a whole. Only the people by virtue of their innate sense of right and wrong can bring this madness to an end and simply stop believing that the solution to  some of life's problems can be bought.

 

 

Grotto in the moonlight. Iconographic portrayal of a thumb in the same iconic way that the virgin Mary is portrayed. The worship or idealisation of false gods, icons, messiahs is the inference here. All sense of ideology has been displaced by 'competition' and doing things better than anyone else!. Why?

Video in situ .....fronted by the spiky hair sculptures floating in space. Video depicts footage from microscopic camera glorifying and spectacularising the very small insignificant bits of our body in the same manner as the capitalist consumerist machine focusses our gaze in order to sell products to solve perceived  problems and doubts, initiated by comparisons with ideal, air brushed perfection.

Need to ask 'And you will know Us by the Trail of the Dead for permission to use soundtrack on youtube. (approved for degree show...but this would be a step up)

And so it is that we emerge older, wiser, more skilled and perhaps a little more open after 4 years of looking more closely at the world around us....physically and metaphorically. Feel good.....but just like everyone else I need to rejoin the consumerist society to produce some money. There really is little option , for any of us.

Helped produce web page covering the degree show for the LSAD painting graduates of 2014.

http://www.lit.ie/lsad/DegreeShowcase/Painting/2014/index.html

And so to fourth and final year!

January 2014

The eternal struggle for ideas and joined up thinking continues. When you abandon the idea of a pretty picture for its own sake....then the questioning and doubting never ends. Is it fun? Well only if someone else thinks what you are producing is fun.....whether their interpretation matches your desired message is largely and has always been irrelevant. Dats de way it wurkz.

Somewhat disconnected video of face (mine) reflecting the anguish of recent world events, the backdrop being the childs puzzle of decades past.

Set to a passage from the very appropriate 'Aladdin Sane' by David Bowie. Portrays individual trying to get to grips with the trauma of the world...pulling himself together ...only to be pulled apart by more of the same.

The above was something of a departure from my mainstream activity.

 Used microscopic camera and photoshop to good effect to translate a straight forward shot of skin / hair into something more spectacular and sci-fi. The theme was the 'spectacularisation' or 'fetishisation' of the small and banal into something extraordianry as is common practice in our consumerist society to sell products that nobody needs.

Has tones of attacking the modern self-obsession industry ,generated by the media portrayal of the unattanable ideal...whether it be skin, hair, body shape ......

OOA combination of these photoshop techniques and lots of 'trial' footage from the microscopic camera ,(very difficult to use wrt motion due to very short depth of field and rough uneven surface), led to the starter video shown below. Set to the tune of the Fairlight Pavillion from a great Texan group ....'And you will know us by the trail of the dead'...the video rocks along converting a very small journey across the human body (2 or 3 inches) into something more awe-inspiring. More work to be done to accentuate these notions further.

Photoshopped rendition of a still shot of the eye in oil paint on board....

Magnified, spectacularised, idolised - banal , mundane bits of the body that we all possess albeit shot from an abnormal perspective.

   60 cm x 130cm
   60cm x 80cm

 
Toes - FABULOUS !!!!
Fist - Magnificent!!
Palm - Stupendous !!

Palm of the hand.









40cm x 60cm

Other strange views of the 'banal' are spectacularised through photography, cropping and photoshop chicanery to produce 'take a second look' responses from the viewer. They recognise image but don't know why initially.

Realisation of a piece of skin via a heavily creased piece of plastic refuse sack ,stiffened and surface prepared with copious coatings of pva glue. Finally painted with vivid orange colour. As light direction in room changed the shadows moved around on the heavily contoured surface. Initially built a light box from led strings to mimic the light source moving around the periphery, creating a fixed pattern with moving shadows. At first used simple rotatuion via a manual rotary switch and 12 sections of led strip but moved on to electric motor driven switching. Could be magnificent if transferred obnto computer controlled switching which could be silent and matched to soundtracks, viewer movement etc etc.

 

Video of light motion box in action - 2 minutes of action second of which is roughly in time with the music ...purely as an indication of what could be achieved with computer controlled
of the led lights.

The last push of 3rd year. March - May 2013

Surface layers are shown peeled / falling away to reveal the underlying image in bright orange and red. Blue flakes are glue to the face  in the shape of the grided sections that have fallen away. (blue flakes made from coating stiffened tracing paper with same blue glaze used over red/orange under painted face) Gridded background itself is holed with loose orange flakes lying around formed in a similar manner. Layers of superficiality.

In the final piece I used the grid as a kind of matrix of the here and now crass consumer lifestyle that we are all subjected to ...without choice. The grid covers the background chaos of consumerist images and desires , extending up the fathers arms and about to engulf his young offspring...whether he likes it or not. No-one has a choice of whether this life is the life they want to lead.

No Escape!

Dec 2012 to Mar 2013 written retrospectively

After the false / exaggerated smile and the flirtation with the effective but immensely time-consuming pixellation moved on to taking photographs of people with a grid superimposed on their faces. ie Like a superior gridding used to duplicate faces accurately but using the additional effect of the distortion of the projected lines due to the surface topography.

When I translated this to painting ...I used MDF board as a support into which I cut the grid lines to give them a narrow definition and some sort of other dimension.

This worked OK and the gridding became more and more interesting in its own right. After expirimenting on Nadia I progressed on to more expressive and intensive efforts.

Heavier scoring and greater bleeding of the scrubbed back painted surface gave a greater visibility of the grid which seems to reinforce the angst expressed in the face.

Pursuing a smaller and heavier grid still further yielded greater tension in the image felt particularly when you see the deep scores close-up and personal. Something primeval and visceral.

In a more benign image a smaller grid still gives added interest to this full frontal portrait in a different way ...being somewhat more aesthetically pleasing where the grid lines happen to flow well with the contours of the face.

The previous connotation of being trapped in the grid is not apparent here...??

Multiple images of the same figure was then attempted to investigate other potential uses of the grid as a representation of other dimensions...time,space   

Getting a bit freaky here in a seventies psychaedelic way.

All of these paintings are large and have a physical presence when seen in the flesh. I think they are interesting and the technique is worth pursuing further if some fresh ideas come along.

xmas2012

Well here we are at the end of semester 1.....hoping we've done enough to get by, floundering in the open seas searching for dry land.

What can you do but smile.....

2 versions of the most disturbing element of the previous face-lifted woman. Pixellated to heighten the artificiality of the already overly emphatic smile. In a painting the best of smiles become leers and you have the whole thing of the smile looking fine from a distance but fragmenting into discrete squares on closer inspection.
Not finished above but you get the general drift. Looks good but the downside is it takes forever...........to do.

In addition to keep my little grey cells happy....I tried out glazing on a beautiful skull image from the web. The resultant giant skull was produced to which I added an ambiguous piece of text......funny,tragic.....you decide ...just try out a few guesses of who the skull could belong to.

Have looked at Borremans, Close, Currin,Kippenberger, Prince,Rauch....etc etc and admire some of their work. However, what is it that drives an artist to stick with one relatively narrow field of expression....for the rest of his working life. (sure, if you've done it well a couple of times....what's the point, where's the fun.) Pretty sure branding,self-advertising ...the filthy lucre in general is the answer....but hope to be pleasantly surprised. happy Xmas....Every...Anyone.

Oh, yeah...forgot cool video. You can enjoy this only at max volume.....

A musical passage from 'A Day in the Life' - Beatles accompanying a video on the continuous intrusion and disturbance from technology in our lives.

 

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AQI1-8nI1o

 

Youtube pulled the plug on this after my violation of copyright of Messrs Starr and McCartney. From my perspective this video is a re-appropriation of a fantastic piece of music which complements the ambition of the video , perfectly. Surely an act of reverence rather than an act of theft!

 

1st semester year 3

Based on book ID by Susan Greenfield started exploring ideas about how we project our individuality to others....starting initially with the facelift as a literal way of changing one's appearance. Thinking about the ever invasive screen alter ego and this dual existence .....what could happen in the future...what is happening now?

And yet more attempts to portray an 'unreal' human face based on the photot of a middle-aged womans face.

This is in a more realistic vein. The bathroom shelf on the left shows the hanging skin removed from her face and the vial of blood and fat from the operation.

Slightly scary but definitely strange and unworldly....progress.

THE HUNT MUSEUM EXHIBIT

The Hunt Museum Project - Exhibition 3rd - 20th May 2012

Take inspiration from the Hunt Museum and produce something for display within the  museum.

I chose the Olmec Man Statue situated close to the exit door in a sort of miscellaneous cabinet.

A bit of research into this little guy was intriguing. Something like 2500 years old from Gulf Coast of Mexico.....2 things struck me immediately. 1) The statue itself is in wonderful condition and 2) what the hell is it doing stuck in a cabinet in a stuffy museum in the south west of Ireland ...devoid of any context. A little bit of reading on museum ideologies indicated that many museums are trying to move with the times and acknowledge both the objects they have and discuss the rights and wrongs of how they came to be here.

Therefore my piece for the museum was going to pose similar questions.......

1st pose is suposed to be reverrential, looking from below with strong accentuated features...a la deity.

2nd pose is contextual...showing iconography from the era/location against a jungle / pyramid structure.
Whether statue reflects a king or a god is unknown but it is strangely a little different from all of the other Olmec statues that I have reaerched.

3rd pose shows a contemporary iconic image a la hollywood portrayal of a film star. Taken from below at an angle it shows the Olmec Man's strong features in the most positive light.

The last pose shows the sorry way the statue is currently presented to the viewing public. Not only is it surrounded by artefacts from different cultures and eras ....they are representations of animals. To add insult to injury the statue is overlooked by 2 crucifixes as if to put the 'foreign' icon in its place.

No reverence , no context....what is it doing here??????

Finished assembled piece showing different ways of portraying an individual.

And there we have it ...The Olmec Man ....as you like him....gift wrapped for your pleasure!!!

 

1st dabble in the world of video.