Between Life And Death
Last project of the year based on scale I decided to take a step back and find something that would keep me motivated and interested. I decided upon the scale of life and how a life that could be lived for an average of 80 years is summed up with a grave stone with a few words, its a visual representation of the scale of life.
I began reading about12th century burial rituals and found that people were thrown into the ground with just a sheet and no headstone, many would know this as a paupers grave. In some cemeteries there was tradition century’s ago that a human sacrifice was to made and the soul of the sacrificed was to roam the grave yard for eternity keeping it watched over from the other side while the grounds keeper watched from our world.
Using my imagination I thought about how there representation of remembrance could be expressed through ectoplasm. In the 19th century catching ectoplasm on camera was a huge vibe sweeping across major cities, many photographs were forgeries others unexplained, so I created my own ectoplasm using a variety of different media and materials trying to recreate the fake entity which was ectoplasm, I used cotton wool normal cotton and what was used in many of the famous photographs which was chiffon.
I dressed the photo shoot to look as Victorian as possible taking images from modern day films such as Sweeny Todd and then creating a look based around the characters so it is relatable to the image we have today of the Victorian gothic era.
I created 2 characters one played by myself and the other my close friend Kaylie Davies. I played the alter ego of the innocent character, becoming this uncontrollable entity that is connected to this one lady, it is a split personality spirit guide and alter ego rolled into one its everything that the innocent is not.
My final piece which is displayed is a small scale instillation of life connections and what we use to connect to the other world of the spirits it’s a visual link to the paranormal investigation and the simple tools that would trigger a hysteria of paranormal investigation, leading from the box is a piece of string that represents life, it’s a play on the phrase how long is a piece of string? Arising many questions about life death and all in-between, hanging from the string are tarot cards, tarot meanings, old postcards used during the project and photographs, this is to represent the research of the paranormal and the development throughout the centuries hanging like they would in a photo lab.
Adrianne Xaviera Brookes
Above is my Artist statement which explains my project and its final pieces.
The project started with a simple biref created by Nick.
"By investigateing everyday objects, details and structures in and around manchester be inventive with scale.useng various formats, consider 2D and 3D ways of scaling up and down things you find intriduing in the city in order to produce ideas and props that play with contradictions of proportion, perspective and ratio."
Our first task was to look at the city through fresh eyes go out take photographs and document our experience, and find a little something for Nick that we discovered on our travels.
on my own i went around town and took lots of photographs of the builings and such, picked one photograph and poped it into my sketchbook.
This was all to familiar due to a college project were this was the exact same start to it.
So me and a group of friends went on a walk together and took some amazing photgraphs of the hidden side of manchester, and we ended up in an old train station, which i was teh only one to notice about the danger asbestos signs.woops.
I then decided to take a step back and think out of box, it says lok at the city through differnt eyes, but living in a city for all your life how are you suppost to look at the same things as if they aer new?
I decided to take a trip to someweer i have never been before,organised the train tickets and went to stay with my best friend Kaylie in Aberystwyth, a small town in whales well away from anything were the next town you have to catch a train to.
I looked around the holiday/ student town and found that it was liek a miniture manchester, the cinima had only one screen and the beach was just liek our piccadilly but wit stones n the obviouse sea.
Dureing my last day we took a trip to the cemetery, as a prior trip to southem cemetry with Liz and Jez i found that the statues and gravestones were very beautiful.
After my little trip i looked deeper at the photogrpahs and found unusual balls of light in the most random of places in the photographs.
This is what kicked off my project.
I thought about the gravestone being a smallscale representation of a life form, then thought about how orbs and ghosts are to a form of small scale life form, there an echo almost of what did once exist.
I researched artist who had worked on ectoplasm, and also looked into the 19th century forgeries of ectoplam on camera.
Then recreated my own, shot lots of photographs witht the help of my friend Kaylie and began to run them through photoshop.
After the project was complete i created a small instilation to go along side the photographs, it was filled with a number of symbolic items photographs tarrot cards, crystals and even a real rats skull, which my cats kindly left in the garden for me.
The images posted below are o sketchbook work, research, final pieces and then my display in sandbar.
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