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.