This week was another of experimenting with new ideas before setting my focus onto creating another developed outcome. A fun little piece that I made, using the layer of latex pulled off (an in turn, turning inside out) of a paintbrush which I've been using for previous work. I instantly thought that the small circular shape appeared to be like a small anal cavity! To continue with my ideas around the double meaning of the word 'consume' (both food wise and in a captialist society), using jewelry and the body, I turned the small object into a ring using wire. It reminded me of the smooth, fleshy and consumer goods made by Alina Szapocznikow, who creates a abject balance "between the fragmented body and indulgent foodstuff".
Although I was planning to ditch the consumerist context and jewelry making, I couldn't resist doing something with it! Especially since the anus discusses so much of human biology, making us think of excrement ("the dead life of the body", the thrown away bit, the bi-product, the grossness, relating to 'Artist's Shit' by Piero Manzoni and 'Cloaca' by Wim Delvoye (shown in order from left to right below), both who discuss excrement as a comodity to pisstake the consumerist world and art culture), of the end of the digestive process, after all we are just long tubes, from mouth to anus, as Kristeva would say. Although I don't see myself taking this further, this was a surprising little gift given by the week.
Next up this week, I collected my work from a glass casting workshop I took part in recently. I went in with small clay objects that I had already made to see what I could do with these shapes to make them more interesting and to also try a new material. Whilst this was a fun process, the outcomes didn't feel particularly close to my contexts and and the colouring didn't turn out quite as I would have hoped, being dusty and patchy. However, it could be interesting to see if I could put the glass object into other work as they do have differing qualities, like transparency and ambiguity. I could try building plaster or clay around them to create something bigger. Although they do have a strange quality, I think they're almost too pretty and not bodily enough for my aims.
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