1 Week Project - "Bodies"

This week we have been given our first week-long project, the title for this project is "bodies". We can use any medium and interpret this title in any way we wish, the end "goal" is to come together with a group of "bodies" to for ma crowd. These could be people, animals, aliens, robots or any other kind of bodies.

My initial response to this was to paint as it's been a while since I painted anything and thought that would get me back into the flow, however I also want to spend this time experimenting with new ideas and different mediums. I was discussing ideas for this project with a group of other students and Paige said she would like to body paint someone so I suggested we collaborate and she could paint onto me - the "final" piece for presentation being a more performative style piece rather than something to hang on the wall.

We discussed a number of ideas and both agreed it would be interesting to try and paint the internal body parts on the outside of the body - we then discussed the idea of robotics/alien life forms and came up with variations on this.

Tuesday was mainly spent gathering ideas and thinking over the concept. Some artists I thought could be interesting included:

H R Giger (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Giger)

I really like that the basic structure of his "alien" looks slightly human in stance, it also plays with the idea of gender / androgyny as it is a compilation of both phallic and feminine shapes used to create the bodily structure. I thought this could be interesting to incorporate into our "body"

ORLAN (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlan)

Orlan is a performance artist that involves plastic surgery / body modification in her work. I thought this was an interesting idea that we could encorporate - perhaps turning my body into a furturistic body, where our society has become so obsessed with body modifications the "inner" sections of me show how much we have transformed ourselves.

Vanessa Beecroft (http://www.vanessabeecroft.com)

Vanessa is also a performance artist who often uses multiple (often nude) models in her performance pieces. I was first attracted to her work because in the below example the models look quite robotic in stance and configuration but I also am keen to explore the objectification aspect of her work. Having been a professional model myself I have (consensually) been objectified by various photographers - the object of their artwork. Usually when we talk about objectification it is non-consensual and based around social or political matters. I started to explore the idea of being objectified in a fetishistic way but from a consensual point of view and this is something i'd like to explore further. For this project if I am to be a walking piece of art-work I will be again being (consensually) objectified and I plan to document my experience of this.

Wednesday we started to experiment with how to paint onto my skin. Paige had drawn up some ideas as to how she thought the inner workings of a non-human could look and we tried coating my skin in both PVA glue and liquid latex to see which would give the best surface to paint over. Having tested the acrylic paint on my skin a few days before for safety reasons, I found it came off a lot easier with a base coat of paint/latex.

The glue was a much thinner layer and itched a bit as the top layers dried a lot quicker than those underneath, whereas the liquid latex went on in thinner layers but dried a lot more evenly between coats. It was more comfortable and thicker.

Once the base layers had dried we used white acrylic as a first coat followed by UV Blue paint (to look like alien/robotic 'blood'). We then used a sharpie pen to draw out the inner pipes and workings (paige did the designs for these). From here we used other acrylic paints to bring the drawings to life. We worked on various parts of the arms, legs and stomach. Initially we planned to peel off the base layers and work on them then re-apply but thought it may crack/warp the design so we worked on them whilst they were attached. Once the designs were dry we used electrical tape as a boarder to look as though I had been opened up under some kind of medical test.

As we weren't sure how well the latex / glue would peel off we went to the photography studio and experimented with some set-ups to document our process. We also did some images together of paige wearing a lab coat as though I was the result /creation of her experiments. Ideally the latex will be re-attached on Friday so we can create a performance element to or 'presentation' but if this doesn't work we could print one of the images instead!