Rumpus!

So with all the exhibition prep, my blog has been slightly forgotten about!  I don't think any of us realised just how much work and preparation there goes into making a successful exhibition.  Long hours were spent cleaning, painting, hanging, panicking and putting the final touches to the show which all took an immense amount of effort from all of us.  But it all worked out in the end when we pulled off one of the coolest exhibitions we'd been to (if we do say so ourselves!)

For my pieces in the exhibition, I wanted to mix my prints in with an installation piece.  Our wonderful curator Fiona Quill, thought a kneeler and alter would look really cool and include some of the objects that I had been photographing all year.  So I went about building an alter and kneeler only for my prayers to be answered (ahem!) when an old school teacher of mine, Sister Perpetua, offered me a lend of her very own kneeler to use!

People found it hilarious that a nun gave me a kneeler and were saying things along the lines of "if only she knew what your project was about!"  But I don't see my project as being "blasphemous" or making fun of the church anymore.  I think it has moved on from that a lot this year, especially in my newest series of prints.

In my project, I'm no longer ridiculing religious subject matter, but more highlighting passages in the Bible that are preached but not lived by the Catholic Church.  On researching, I found there are so many passages about wealth, how wealth is not important and only for fools.  Yet the church has become notorious over the last two decades for its obsession with wealth, which is what I wanted to highlight.

When I began these prints, I had it in my head to do them as silkscreens.  However, after improving my Photoshop skills and mastering the big scary printer in the Print room, they looked incredibly cool as digital prints.  I originally had photography work in the exhibition but on seeing how well these particular prints were working I decided pretty much last minute to use them in the exhibition and they are what I'm continuing to use as the semester goes on.

I really like the use of colour these prints, with the script like writing.  I got the idea for the writing from a letter I found within a bible belonging to my grand-uncle, Father John.  The script in the letter and prints are very similar.

I wanted the objects to look as cheap and tacky as possible so I did different effects on Photoshop, changing the colours, bitmap effects etc.

I really like where I am with these as I feel they work well and also look well.  But that's just my opinion.  And in here, that doesn't seem to matter.