Context

"Analyse different contextual perspectives within a chosen art or design subject"


Clytie
George Frederick Watts 

The Greek myth of the nymph Clytie is the inspiration for this project. In this sculpture, Watts captures the moment of transformation as the woman is transformed into a sunflower. 
I am intrigued by this transformation from human to plant - there are obvious similarities in both - both have a network of arteries and both have pores and ridges.

Ultraviolet (detail)
Jo Coupe

Coupe's plant and flower drawings echo late Victorian Arts and Crafts prints and patterns. She uses these  as a backdrop for her make-believe race of tiny fairies which sit on branches and flowers.
Based on Coupe's work, I will be drawing flowers to investigate the shapes and textures of leaves, petals and stems, in order to compare them to human skin.

Woman with Bird
Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith's Woman with Bird series intrigued me because of the layers of drawing: the feathers over each other, resembling a creature in movement, over the face of the woman.  I have been layering some of my Life drawings over watercolours of flowers because I think there are similarities in the shapes.

Closed Contact
Jenny Saville

In Saville's Closed Contact pieces, she photographs her body pressed against glass so that her form is manipulated into unfamiliar shapes. The audience also gets a very intimate view of individual follicles and pores in Saville's skin. 

The Shadow of Ecstasy
Melissa McGill

In this piece, McGill has transcribed Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Theresa by using the shadows created by the folds in the cloak of Theresa. By taking these shapes out of context, McGill creates a strange form resembling the crest of a wave, or cells when looked at through a microscope. I think the idea of a piece placed directly onto a wall is fascinating: the piece can interact with the space, and only lasts as long as the exhibition before it has to be removed. Perhaps my final piece should be a similar format - as then it will be playing with the notion of lifespan in humans and flowers. 

British Isles
Tania Kovats

This piece bears a resonance to the projections I made. This series made me consider the topographical nature of my work - the early abstract drawings I made resemble contours on a map or land forms.

 Rosa Parks, Louise Bourgeois and Stella Painted
Barbara Zucker

Zucker's work is concerned with the ageing process - she takes lines and wrinkles from her own face, or her contemporaries', and forms them in steel, creating an unchanging, un-ageing monument to time and life. However, while Zucker is addressing her thoughts on her own life and age, I am concerned with a more general notion of lifespan - the lifespan of a human is far greater than that of a flower - but flowers can experience resurrection, rebirth. Bulbs of Daffodils or Croci sprout flowers every spring, which live fleetingly before they die. It will be interesting to see how my thoughts of life and age change and develop as I grow older. Perhaps, like Zucker, I will find myself trying to express my feelings about age in a very personal way as time affects my skin, my hair and my bones. 

Lilian Floral, Pussy Willow
Barbara Zucker

I was delighted to discover that in an installation of her work, Zucker placed one of her wrinkle sculptures next to an image of a Pussy Willow, drawing similarities between the skin and the plant. This theme has been present since the very start of my project, and it is reassuring to find that other artists have made this connection between human and plant. In my final piece, I hope to juxtapose human imagery with flower imagery as Zucker has done.


Mexico City, Mexico
Kathy Prendergast

Prendergast's City Drawings have inspired me to "map" my hand, imagining the lines and wrinkles of my palm as rivers or roads in a series of line-y drawings, which in fact resemble not only the grid in my skin, but could also represent strands of hair or strings of muscle or a network of veins.


Untiltled
Louise Bourgeois

The lines in this etching struck a chord with me when I found this piece because of it's similarity to my line drawings where I have used parallel lines to represent the lines on the palm of my hand. These lines also remind me of the concentric circles you find when you project an image on acetate using an overhead projector. 

Ten Months
Susan Hiller

After seeing Susan Hiller's exhibition at London's Tate Britain, I was struck by the way she uses series to document hers, and others, work. In Ten Months, Hiller documents her changing stomach during her pregnancy according to the lunar months. Her swelling stomach resembles the moon when taken out of contest - I am really interested in this grid format, perhaps my final piece will be a series of drawings, rather than one large drawing.

Purgatorium
Ellen Gallagher

Gallagher's repeated lip motifs create an intriguing grid: the prints together make a very different overall piece to the individual parts that make it up. I think that my final piece will consist of a series of drawings that, together, work to create one large drawing. I hope to create balance and I will pay particular attention to composition when making my drawing, so that, like Gallagher, the overall drawing does not simply rely on the individual parts, but is effective as an entirety.


Sensible Ellipse of Lost Origin
Avis Newman

Tutors at a recent interview at Falmouth suggested I include this artist in my research, and I was thrilled to find her work is very similar to how I want my final piece to look. Made up of body parts and other strange, natural forms, her loose style of mark making is very similar to what I am trying to achieve in this final piece.