Artist Talks

Dean Chalkley

These portraits are incredibly striking and I find them to be very personal, even though the are posed. They seem to capture the person's personality which I really like. The setup and the clothing is also displaying this. I find his black and white photographs are the most interesting as I love the tonal ranges, creating depth and light areas in the subject matters skin tone.

Dean Chalkley is a Photographer and Film Maker based in London. He grew up in the Thames estuary town of Southend-on-Sea in Essex  UK. After training to be a Tailor he put the scissors aside in favour of the Camera and studied at Blackpool and the Fylde College, completing his Photography degree. Whilst at college he began shooting for Dazed and Confused magazine (1998). Since then Dean has continued to depict his love for Culture, and Music especially working with many different publications, record companies and fashion brands. He has undertaken high profile campaigns for the likes of Rayban, Levis and New Balance.
His clients include Adidas, Tatler, New Balance, Fred Perry, Hush Puppies, Ray-Ban, Levis, Everything Everywhere, Fiction Records, Island Records, XL Recordings, Diageo, NME, Figtree, Sony BMG, Universal Music, EMI, BBC, O2, Santander, Ben Sherman, Kickers, Pentland, VCCP, WCRS, Exposure, Love, M&C Saatchi, The Observer, The Sunday Times, IDEO, and many more.

Stuart Freedman

Images taken from www.stuartfreedman.com

I personally love these works the most out of the artist talks as they really capture my imagination and provides very captivating, rich images of our world. I find them incredibly inspiring and suggest you take a look at his website.

Stuart Freedman was born in London and has been a photographer since 1991. His work has been published in, amongst others, Life, Geo, Time, Der Spiegel, Newsweek, The Sunday Times Magazine and Paris Match covering stories from Albania to Afghanistan and from former Yugoslavia to Haiti.

His work has been recognised in many awards, from amongst others, Amnesty International (twice), Pictures of the Year, The World Sports Photo Award, The Royal Photographic Society and UNICEF. In 1998 he was selected for the World Press Masterclass and the following year for the Agfa Young Photojournalist of the Year.

Film: The Truman Show

He doesn't know it, but everything in Truman Burbank's (Jim Carrey) life is part of a massive TV set. Executive producer Christof (Ed Harris) orchestrates "The Truman Show," a live broadcast of Truman's every move captured by hidden cameras. Cristof tries to control Truman's mind, even removing his true love, Sylvia (Natascha McElhone), from the show and replacing her with Meryl (Laura Linney). As Truman gradually discovers the truth, however, he must decide whether to act on it.                                                                     - The Truman Show, Film synopsis

The Truman Show, a reality television program in which his entire life, since before birth, is filmed by thousands of hidden cameras, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is broadcast live around the world. I remember watching this when I was much younger and caught the last half of the movie, and even then I was intrigued. The basis of the movie of constantly being watched by hidden cameras was always a thought of mine I had as an imagined situation that I often crossed my mind. So when I came across this film, I was very interested and excited. 
Then during a Contextual Studies session, we were shown this movie, and I finally was able to watch it from the beginning.

I recently wrote an essay on Genius, Authorship and Originality and used this film as a discussion point, which I thought  would be interesting to share my thoughts on this film. These are all my own words and opinions.

Installation Sessions: Student Projections

Here are a few projections I very much enjoyed from the projected session that other students displayed. I found this very helpful and engaging discussing ideas and how we could develop them. They also gave my ideas for the near future I may like to explore.

Bethan Thomas

I worked with Beth during our group workshops and saw the progression of this projection. I loved the idea and found it to be very effective. I loved that she created a realistic atmosphere in the space, and I found myself slightly mesmerized by the experience. This had sound effects to the video and I found it would have worked with the same sound effects from the videos taken to add to the effect.

Elisha Jones

This was Elisha's projection that gave me a religious impression to begin with. As you can see in the top image, seeing these birthday candles on a bigger scale, against a plinth and framed within it reminded me of a cathedral space. It was then changed into smaller scale to show the difference and importance of scale when working with projections, and even when working with prints. It instantly changes the effect given.

Roxie Owen

I really enjoyed Roxie's projection, however I did prefer it without the music chosen. I felt the music overpowered the video and atmosphere it can give, and I was concentrating more on the music than the video. But without the music, I was able to watch this video without distractions and had the sound effects from outside of the room, of the cars on the main road. This accidentally added to the video and made the experience more realistic. I also loved the setup, making the projection look like the windscreen of the car. This looked even more realistic when sitting closer to the projection.

Megan Williams

Megan's projection had this image as a constant throughout, beginning with slowly coming to focus, then going back out of focus at the end. It had a very personal song attached to it that reminded her of her grandmother. I liked the idea a lot, and found it very similar to a daydream. When you remember a face and place and time of a memory, and it slowly fades in and out of focus with the noises attached.

Swansea Trip

All the way back in September, of 2014, within the first few weeks of my first year in University, we took a trip around Swansea to look at some art. The work that was situated around Swansea was a programme called Art Across The City. Some of these pieces are still around Swansea even though this project began in Spring 2013. As I live around the Swansea area, I spend a lot of my time in the city itself and travel by bus to get there, I pass many art works along my way. They may have been here for quite a while but I still find it very pleasant to pass these every day. I feel like they add a lot of colour and interest to the city and displays the interest in the arts the community has. I love that Swansea embraces this culture.

 

We also visited some other exhibition spaces which included Volcano, Mission Gallery and Swansea Museum. There are a lot of spaces and opportunities in Swansea that provides a variety of art to the community.

Appropriation: Final Images

I realise I didn't show my final work I produced for my Appropriation Project that I really enjoyed and wanted to share 3 as I found it a very exciting project. 

The concept of my work is to express myself through my images, approaching the subject of religion from a feminist point of view. I want my images to be successful in context, aesthetics and my own judgment on these subjects (religion and feminism).  
To create my images, I used the medium of digital editing, through Photoshop. I chose this particular method as I am very confident and skilled at working with Photoshop, and for what I wanted to create, I felt there was no other method that would have furthered or enhanced my images.

Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger is a conceptual artist that addresses cultural constructions of power, identity, and sexuality. Her works that question the roles of women in society are what inspire me most of all, especially for my project. Her use of text and relation to the imagery is a quality I’d like my own works to include. I think this relationship is a very difficult one to get right, but when it is can be very powerful. Her clever use of text overlapping he imagery to further her point is incredibly inventive. 

Guerrilla Girls

Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. They hide their identities with gorilla masks as they believe that their identities aren't important, more their work is important. 

Here are some previous posts on this project showing more of my inspirations for this project:

Julien Pacaud
Victoria Van Dyke
Hannah Hoch, Marcel Duchamp, John Heartfield 

Installation Workshop: Projection

This was the final video I used for my projection. I used old footage that I had shot previously for a project, but was not used, which I thought I could use for my projection and well as shooting new scenes. As I wanted to capture the outdoors, and include memory/dreams, I produced a kind of story to project which flashed back and forth to images of nature and back again. I used the idea of 'flashbacks' to project my memory/dream theme which I very much wanted to capture.

      As I was also thinking of my previous idea of projecting on the black blinds, making it look like a home movie, I thought this had the same effect on material on a 'washing line'. It reminded me of this because you had to project on walls or fabric to see the home video. Obviously you wouldn't project outdoors, however this just gave the illusion of a family setting.

During the project, it was suggested to view the installation from behind, where the fabric was much more layered and created more of a dream look by making the image more distorted and created a sort of film over the projection. I really did prefer this effect much more. It was also suggested that adding small detailing like hanging shocks or a t-shirt on the line would make it more of a family experience and would refer to this more, which I thought was a great suggestion, and would definitely add to the projection if I was to further the project. 

I really enjoyed these sessions as I have never worked with projection installation before this. It was a new experience which I found very helpful and gave me ideas to work on in the future.

View from behind the projection.

K. William LeQuier

K. William LeQuier is a glass artist that creates these incredibly moving and beautiful sculptures. I was blown away at how amazing these sculptures are and had to share them on my blog. They almost seem like they are real in a sense, like they have been frozen in time. They remind me of Japanese art, especially of the very famous The Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai. 

The Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai 

Katsushika Hokusai Comparison 

K. William LeQuier uniquely conveys the raw emotion of a single moment in time with each of his sculptures. The power of his work is in the quality and expression of three-dimensional sketches carved from glass. The fluid movement of the glass and the complexity of layered intersecting lines are evocative of both the harmony and the random forces found in nature. - Source 

I find them so moving and captivating, they almost transport me into a different world, which I love about art. I find this to be an important aspect to photography especially the arts. This is exactly what I want to capture in my own art.