My practice this year was kicked off by my visual culture essay research looking at Art Therapy tasks. I was in isolation at the time so it was difficult to source materials to do much in the way of sculpture. So, I asked friends and family to take part in the exercise and “draw yourself picking an apple from a tree”. According to the books and articles I read there is a grading scale in which these images can be analysed that can tell the therapist about the artists self reflections on their ability to attain a goal. With this exercise I liked that I was getting people to engage in art and drawing that never would have if it wasn’t for me asking them to. I found that everyones response was to either laugh at their childish attempt or found drawing enjoyable. I like that this in itself engaged people in a theraputic process with art wether that made them laugh or relax for sometime. This wasn’t my intention, my intentions were based off pure curiosity to see if this actually worked and if I could analyse things from the images that people created. Obviously, i’m not a trained therapist so I couldn’t make much understanding of all the analysis technique.
A short time after, the Torys voted against the extension of free school meals. Something which I relied on when I was at school, this was a decision that would effect children in the same, if not worse position than what I was in. To be honest, it hit a nerve with me so I decided to make use of that. I saw Marcus Rashford MBE was trending on twitter with a post in relation to this vote. It equated child food poverty to becoming a worse pandemic than Covid-19. We are being bombarded by everything and anything covid related so for me, it put the problem into perspective. I found his post to be very strong and compelling, it was almost poetic like some sort of dramatic reading. Twitter is a great platform to reach a wide audience, although the words just felt to formal to be there. So I put them on a bowl instead.
I thought they looked quite good on a bowl. It felt fitting to use an object connected with the topic in which he discusses. The bowl is full of words, thoughts, letters, energy as it spirals towards the centre however it remains empty. The bowl is old and used but retains a delicate blue rim with gold painted emblem on it. To match and coincidentally, colour of the tory party, blue was the colour of the text. (PMC4) I like that this work requires the viewer to encounter a bowl differently. The text requires the viewer to circle the bowl or turn the bowl with your hands, or turn your head every way in attempt to read the text – it asks something different of the viewer. I like it as an individual object as I think a full dinner set with text could be overwhelming. I found putting it on a plinth allowed the viewer to move around freely to read the text – however this is quite. typical method of displaying work. (This needs more thought)
From this bowl I would like to make others. These will have less writing on them and I intend to use them. This means I would need to use something other than acrylic paint for the text as this just wipes off. This is good for experimenting but not for eating out of. I would like to organise a small event which will be the art work.
proposal 1: A small dinner
