Studio practice

 Evaluation  

This project began as a response to a painting from the Nottingham castle gallery, I chose to respond to For Sale, 1857 by James Collinson. The traditional idea of Portraits is not something that I found interesting, I prefer to work with objects and such so decided to focus on the the thing that drew me to the For Sale painting to begin with, the busy soundings in the painting, the big table of stuff. I found a few interpretations to this painting but the one that I particularly liked was that the lady was like a porcelain doll, perfect, wrapped up in pretty clothes and stiff figured, but the stuff in the back ground still really interested me. I believed that the modern equivalent of a porcelain doll would be like Barbie or Bratz doll, these dolls tend to come in a box with all there necessities, the things that represent the doll, I decided to see the painting that way, the lady being the porcelain doll and the table of stuff her necessities. I then began to think about this in a way relating to us, people rather dolls. If we were to apply this same idea to ourselves as different individuals what would be our little box of necessities. I don't mean this in the human sense of what do we need to physically sustain us like water I mean it in a more individual sense of what objects do we frequently keep close. I chose this idea of the bedside table, I found that to be a current representation of the ladies table of things and this idea.

 This idea of the representation of people through their objects was something I wanted to explore on a wider scale. I decided to ask others for images of their bedside tables from above in the aim to create an image collection, not yet knowing what id actually do with this image collection but just to explore the idea, I sent out a post on social media and used a few other methods and soon had many images to work from, I was surprised by the amount of images received, just as I believe it can be quite exposing. I decided not to really do much to these images, I kept them as an image collection and just arranged them into book form, I thought to begin with I may use the images to create paintings or something but found the intrigue in the idea comes from the images themselves, leaving them unaltered allows a viewer to just also explore this idea visually. Later I went on to further explore this idea through a photo documentation that turned into the mini books and the time lapse video, in these pieces of worked I'm exploring this same idea but observing myself rather than others. Part of this choice to move on more and do these other tasks was this need to feel more ownership over my work, logically I knew the work was mine as id thought about it and brought everything together but the fact that other people had taken the images was still kind of throwing me a little. Despite knowing the work was mine and enjoying the process I still felt a slight disconnection. This isn't a bad thing, I combated this feeling by bringing in the other book and video and now that I've realised its something to remember.

Reflecting on this project I've found it to be one of questions and observation. I ask many questions, is the role of the bedside table important? Can we be seen through our objects? Are we our table selves? These are questions I've been asking the viewer but also myself. Through this work I've come to the conclusion that we are more than just our objects and belongings, we have past experiences, independent thought and relationships with the world that shapes and defines us as people. I don't believe a persons whole true self  could be seen through material possessions but I do believe they can show a persons habits and routines and give hints into the surface level of a person. Personally,  I like looking at things from a curious perspective and I feel like I've really been able to just let that lead the work, this in turn kept it fun and enjoyable for me the whole way through, I'm happy with the worked I've made and eager to see how the table self books look exhibited.