Cabinets

I wanted to make a collection of photos of these display cabinets which are out on the streets in Budapest. They are permanent advertising spaces, and have so much more solidity and grandeur than posters or billboards. The old-fashioned window-cabinets intrigued me, not to go into the courtyard, where the shop advertising leads to, but as frames/containers as sculptural objects, maybe.

I am interested in the different glass, the wood or metal frame, the non-uniform shapes of the various cabinets. The matching pairs on either side of the doorway, the upkeep of some of them, the neglect of some. I walked past one of my favourite ones (a knitting shop advertisement, row 1 column. 1&2) and it was in the process of being changed by the new shopkeeper. The old knitted items were being replaced with balls of wool stacked high in the colours of the rainbow. I stopped and took another picture, and the owner started to talk to me. I explained that I was an art student and I tried to explain my fascination with the cabinets, their function, their ubiquity. It was difficult to explain, so I just said something about being interested in knitting (which is true), so she took me into the shop. She had come from New York, though her parents were Hungarian, and she had just taken over the running of the old wool shop. She was keen to promote Hungarian yarn, made using Hungarian wool, and also to promote knitting and contribute to and nurture the small knitting community in Budapest. I was in the little shop, and there was an old lady sitting on a chaise long, doing some knitting, with three or four other pieces of half started knitting beside her. The owner was also a knitwear designer, so i looked at some of her clothes, including knitted bikinis.

I felt like this was a treasure I had been led to, but unfortunately, it was wasted on me, as I just wanted to get back out on the street to look at more cabinets.

Self-Portrait

As part of work for a Intermedia class, I used cosmetics that I apply to my skin, hair nails and teeth in a routine, therefore I arranged them in a grid system drawn in pencil. The reflection on the left is the print of the still wet cosmetics, without the lines of the grid.

The work is a portrait without the self. But the cosmetics applied to the paper give a representation of the self under the constraints of self presentation.

Make-Up Painting on Pencil Surface

i started painting with my make up when i realised the pencil was getting all over my fingers and face when i touched my face. the initial pencil drawing was quite a frantic and intense one, putting lots of weight on the pencil and pushing hard. Then the make-up application was quite gentle and considered. the change in pace inspired by the materials used made me think about painting. I used make up/other cosmetic products to do my self-portrait (further on in this blog)

Shadow Gaps on Pencil Surface

drawings with pencils

reflective pencil surfaces.

These shapes are the cut out from in between the shadows on the stairs. This relates to other work of mine, the later, sycamore fetish work. I'm taking the constantly disappearing and reappearing phenomenon of the shadow made on the stairs by the railings, and taking it out of that place. I'm attempting to celebrate and re-imagine the shapes in an alternately organised structure. I'm taking the original shapes, and creating something new from them.

I haven't yet done an installation with these shapes. It is my intention to find a site to exhibit them. Maybe a diffferent set of stairs in a different building, but maybe the same stairs but one floor up or down. In various different arrangements, some shaped in a more organic way than others.

drawing around shadows in my building

I walked past these shadows every day, its the reflection from the light on the stairs, as it shines through the wrought iron railings. I thought the way the shadow climbs each step was interesting, and wanted to draw around it to see what it looked like flattened out.

Arrived in Budapest

This obscure object/organism is actually a macro image of an extinguished candle wick. I burned a candle and when i blew it out, this was the shape it was left as. I thought it was the most interesting little thing, that something that you don't normally think of as interesting can just magically be so beautiful. Without any human control. It was just chance/ mystery/magic that decided it would burn into this wonderful shape. This unexplained phenomena was the very small beginning of my inspiration while in Budapest.

'Free Breakfast 03/10/10'

chosen site

installed image

After Walid Raad

At the Walid Raad exhibition at Whitechapel there were a series of blue monochrone photographs that were found in rubble in Lebanon. Alongside was an explanation saying that when they sent to the laboratory for testing, it was discovered that they were actually pictures of men and women who had died.

"A series of monochrome blue photographs, the negatives for which were found under the rubble of war-ravaged Beirut, hide the images of anonymous men and women found dead in the Mediterranean." from the Whitechapel website

I was inspired by the use of the scale in these photos, the blue photos were massive and the photos of the men and women underneath were about 100 times smaller. I've done the same thing here with my photos of the dust from the Gorbals demolition, and with a smaller photo of the demolition site. On second thought I should've used a photo of the two towers at Norfolk Court before one was demolished. I think the scale and clinical style creates a cynical and complex relationship between the two photos in each image.

cast-offs

Here are images made from the non-space cut out above the dust in the photographs I took of the floor within the installation with the table and wallpaper. Due to the bad printing quality, the photos came out very blue, but when I cut off the top of the photos, the blues created a new, calmer aesthetic, but fro the same photo. I would like to investigate these more, maybe using inks and collage.

scenes from untitled

untitled