Video work, Sound pieces and a Hint of Blasphemy

With all the stress of the last week, I cant wait to have these assessments over me.  Course then I have to go through the stress of results...KILL ME.

So aside from last week's dramatic occurances with losing half my work, I've been working on some video and sound pieces over the Xmas break until now.  These take quite a while to do as I'm never sure what it is exactly I'm doing whilst editing.  I tend to wing it a tad seeing as using editing software is not my strong point.  For the video pieces I wanted to use them as another means of displaying some of my photography, as well as incorporating typical "church sounds".

Original link address:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz3U-iwUb3k&feature=youtu.be

Original link address:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlmMp7JtmZ0

I also worked on a sound piece, which I have in my head to use as part of my work in our exhibition in February.  Its the typical sounds you hear whilst in mass and played on a loop I think it would work quite well in that situation.  There was an error whilst trying to upload just purely a sound piece so for the purpose of the blog, I had to include a black background image to upload to youtube but it is primarily made for the purpose of a sound piece.

Original link address:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOgWL4BcxO4&feature=youtu.be

And as a final piece of work before the assessments Tuesday, I also did a bit of extra Photoshop to again bring across my idea of the meaning of Religion and the church in today's society, how some people have forgotten what the true meaning of Religion and having faith means and of course, the materialism of it.

Assessments...be good to me..

More Photography..

As previously done, I decided to do some more photography.  This, along with digital prints from photoshop, are becoming my main practice.  Since getting the hang of using the cameras, lighting and editing, I wanted to collect an even larger collection of photos than the last time.

Instead of working in the photography studio, I again worked at home in my own DIY studio as this was where all my objects were.  Again I wanted to show the cheap, throwaway religious objects people have around their homes but I still wanted the pictures to look good.

 

 



 

 

As my grand-uncle was a priest, a lot of his religious items are in my house.  For instance his bible that he would have used, crosses, mass booklets etc.  He was also a poet and many of his writings would have religious content and a lot of these writings, notes for mass etc, I found in his bible.  I then decided to photograph his religious items along side the cheap, everyday objects you can buy.  by doing this I wanted to show the two sides of religion, what it should mean i.e deep faith and understanding and what it unfortunately has become for many people, materialistic and money hungry.

 

 

 

The fact that the bible is still in pristine condition after all these years and also the fact that he signed his name to it, shows what these items meant to him, very different to now which is what I wanted to show.

 

 

I also began to group the objects together, again inspired by Liliana Porter's work.

 



 

 

And once again I have to thank my unnaturally shakey hands for helping me create the next image.

 

 

This is one of my favourite images.  Its based on Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, difference being that my one was done without the help of bodily fluids.  Its not edited, just done purely with a slow shutter setting, certain lighting from just a normal bedside lamp and my shakey hands.



 

I hate you USB..

So this morning as I sat down to begin working, rearing to go...I plugged in my USB key with EVERYTHING on it only to find that it had decided to stop working over night.  3 repair men later and I had to accept that it was gone, along with all the work I had on it.  Panic set in until I eventually realised that the majority of my work was already thankfully on my blogs so minus a few recent pieces I was good to go...Still though, someone was incredibly sad today :(

I decided to revisit some of my older work to calm me down.  I had originally done A1 size line drawings which I loved the simplicity of but I wanted to experiment with some colour.  Taking inspiration from Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, I focused in on reds, yellows, oranges etc. and also included the text which I had previously worked with.

 

 

I tried to go about it in an unplanned fashion, putting down paint wherever I wanted on impulse which is VERY unlike the way I work...OCD central here, I have to have everything pre-planned.  However I liked the end result. the way in which the colours worked well with each and the way the text pops out.


To calm me down I also experimented on Photoshop. How I thought that would calm me down I'll never know, its possibly the most head wrecking programme there is.

 

However, I had gotten the idea of Holy Vending machines from fellow printer Meg and thought it would be a good idea to try.  So with the help of found images and also my own photography work and etchings, I created a series of "Holy Vending Machines".

 



Photoshop is hurting my head..

Having previously created etchings, my next step was to decide on how I wanted to use them.  I arranged them to partially cover a window pane which I them photographed, as I wanted to give across the impression that these are things you would see in a shop window.

 

 

 



 

 

 

I decided to try a type of collage.  Using the line drawings which I had previously done, I photoshopped my etchings into them.

 

 



 

 



 

While I liked the look of the images, the way the minute use of colour looked well in my opinion, I decided to try the same technique using found images of shop fronts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I much preferred the look of these and also these looked better when actually printed out.  For the next step of my project, I think I'm gonna try my hand at some video work.  There are a few ideas I've had since going to Knock that I want to give a try while I have the time before Assessments.

 

 

 

 



Etchings

As I stated in my last post, my next idea was to incorporate metal etchings into my project.  At the beginning of 3rd Year I had decided to only do a drawing project, one which I tired of quickly.  But with etchings, I see them as another way of drawing so I thought these would be perfect to bring into my project.  Doesn't hurt that I love doing them either!

I decided on going for A5 size etchings for this particular part.  I wanted to show the typical things you can get in places like Knock, the little throw-away, often cheap, small souvenirs.  Working with this size, I created 4 plates which each depicted a certain item - a rosary beads, 2 Holy water bottles, a key chain and a cross for a necklace. 

To show that these are cheap objects, I scruffed up the plates so that they weren't perfect.  I rubbed them off different surfaces so that scratches and marks would appear on the background.  If the result wasn't what I wanted, I was going to add an aqua-tint into the mix but thankfully my mishandling of the plates was enough to give me the effect I wanted.

 

 

I liked working with this size as they were a lot easier to handle and I think more effective than having all on one big plate.  Having printed them purely in black to give them a generic appearance, I then discovered Liliana Porter, whose work I found I could greatly identify with.

 

With her etchings she hand paints them in afterwards to add another dimension to her work.  So taking my cue from her, I lightly painted in areas of some of the etchings.

 

 





While I plan on showing them as purely etchings, I also want to try and incorporate them into other works, more than likely photographing them in a certain way for example in a shop like arrangement.