Foundations- painting

So i just got some cheapy acrylics from unibooks and was doing some bored sketchy doodles...
i think they are pretty shit but i'll post them anyway.

Visual Inquiry- experimentation with text 3D

So the next half of the text project was to create a sculptural piece with some reference to the original text.
Because my original text was barring orders I decided that I wanted to create a rough sort of unintelligible symbol mimicking the way that we interact with one another whilst drunk.
I created the symbol by stripping back the word BARRED down to BRD it's most simple form and then mixed around the shapes made by the negative space around the letters to form a symbol that looks like a tacky modern neon sign used to represent a hooker.

We had to photograph the sculpture in situation, so I thought I would dress bogan and play with that idea.

'Dick Dolls'

Here are a couple of the 'Dick Doll' soft sculptures (if you will) which I am creating for an up comming group exhibition for the Adelaide Feast Festival.
My dolls are a humorous comment on the way that gay men are often portrayed as the 'girls best friend' in mainstream media, and are de-sexualized and emasculated to a degree.
Being portrayed in this way I always feel like we are made out to be 'just one of the girls'.
Thus I have created these dolls, designed to be be a girls favorite plush toy, keeping them company, sipping coffee or martinis (from their cute material cups).

However they have been created with unusually large penises as a way of saying,

'HEY I'M STILL A MAN!!'

Visual Inquiry- Experimentation with text. 2D

This is the first part of a project; taking a piece of text and creating 5 different 2 dimentional representations of the text. I chose barring orders i found in the cupboard at work.

FOUNDATIONS and stuff.

So I have began studying a bachelor of visual arts (specialization) at Uni SA City west.
So this takes up alot of the time that I have to put into my own work... so here is some of the work I have been producing in Uni.

Copper 'monster' brooch.

found object bracelet, (made from empty pill packets)

Torn lace curtain 'coocoon'. The piece was about defining space.

 Sandblasted 'dick jar'
(ha ha. i'll never be above a good dick and balls.)

Sketches from drawing class with James Dodd, im not great at still life so I sort of made up my own thing.. ha ha, it's all good though.

Claes Oldenburg influenced wineglass soft sculpture... to give an idea of scale I can stand inside the bowl part of the wineglass... The lining has been stained with cheap cab-merlot... it still smells AMAZING.

Him and The Beast- oil & ink 120cm x 90cm (hight x width)

I guess this piece is undeniably personal, but people seem to look at it and say that it's got this dark emotional message behind it, as though all the subtext is depression & anxiety based.

Yes the content comes from somewhere dark, and it does slightly echo the idea of Winston Churchill's 'black dog'. 

HOWEVER, I didn't want the idea to be so narrow as; 'these people are dealing with depression', it's supposed to be about that sort of emotional baggage that we carry with us through our lives, and those memories that sort of grow and add to the negative way that we filter our surroundings.

I wanted to go simple and just have this person, growing up with 'the beast'. I remember being young and feeling like I already had that beast hanging around me, but not knowing what it was, it hadn't quite taken shape, then I guess getting older you start to realize it's presence and study it, to find out what that darkness is. (Thus I have depicted the younger of the blue people with 'the beast' around his legs' and next the older, standing apart from it)

Then I went on to show how you relate to the beast, you carry it with you, and sometimes you come to enjoy it's company, the comfort of it's constant presence, however much this beast can burden you. (Hence one holding it, and the other around it's shoulders).

Lastly I wanted to show how you can become engulfed by the darkness, let it take over, and force you to crouch beneath the belly of 'the beast', still unable to let go.

Him and The Beast

Oils & Ink 

120cm x 90cm (height x width)

SMALL BONES

Just a few small experimental pieces I am doing at the moment, working with pallet knives and mono-printing the background. I kind of feel like they look like tiny animal bones or something.... think teeny organisms or something... not your neighbors recently deceased cat... (they wont know it was you.... stupid cat).

The Lines, Caught & Hung By Lines

The Lines, Caught

May 2010

Acrylic and Charcoal on canvas

96cm x 130cm

Hung By Lines
May 2010
Acrylic and Charcoal on canvas
96cm x 130cm

The Lines, Him

The Lines, Him
April 2010
Acrylic on canvas
140 x 193cm

Again I am working with the radiating lines, however I chose to make the piece more about how we are connected to the world on a more spiritual plane. I have used the idea of these light and dark lines creating the body as well as being emitted from it.
In religious iconography often the saints and prophets or whatever, have over sized eyes and ears (with which it is better to see and hear the lord) and are making symbols with their fingers.
I decided to go with the opposite and have neither eyes not ears or any real appendages, simply the halo around the head.
Think of it what you will, the piece isn't intended to be particularly religious, I simply prefer to put subtext such as that in to create interest and depth about the piece...
I want you to think when you view my work... at least a little.