My recent sound piece "Creativity Will Set You Free" was played on Adam Walton's show on BBC Radio Wales at prime time at 22 hrs on Saturday the 7th of June! Unfortunately the notification went to an inbox I hardly ever used, so I managed to miss it. It would have been nice to know if anything was said about it.
I also finished my last collage piece for "Project X" - it is also the last piece in which I use copyright free vintage engravings. I feel saturated with this kind of aesthetics and am thinking how to change direction. I have some ideas but will have to rearrange my workspace entirely. I will need to be able to stand up and will also require larger surfaces to work on.
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| "No One Sees No One Knows - I am Just a Cut-Out" Collage with artist's self-portrait, copyright 2014 |
"No One Sees No One Knows - I am Just a Cut-Out" was a piece inspired by this year's Moma Wales Open theme "Myself" that I thought about for quite a long time. Yes it did get in. I'm glad I gave it time because in the end I decided to make the piece into an ironic comment about collaging flat images ("this is not me, only an image"), as well as the flatness of the way other people see you. In other words, it is all about surface and the sense of being disposable with little intrinsic value (at least in the eyes of those who hold the power within our society). External influences always threaten to break you ("snap you in two") when you're not able to hold your fort. This picture tells the story of a Catch22, that is of someone who is not able to show their ailments. These are invisible internal problems as well as the absence of correct shape. In my case it's the feet as well as the spine, which have grown rather liberally like knotty tree branches. Of course fitting into ready made shoes and clothes is difficult, and really one should have everything customised if only one wasn't also very poor as a consequence of the illness.
What people don't see they don't understand, but if they did see it they probably wouldn't understand it anyway. So do you hide in shame or bravely show your most personal source of embarrassment? I think we know the answer - when we are not strong, we probably shouldn't subject our most vulnerable selves to public scrutiny and should probably only talk about the issues in covert ways.
