Gert & Uwe Tobias

Today, whilst I was walking around the Nottingham Contemporary Art Gallery, I walked past this image. This is an image made by Gert & Uwe Tobias are brother artists that grew up in Transilvania, whose work is influenced by traditional folk art and abstract art from the early 20th century. (I appologise for the poor qualty of the image) These influenced combined create work that is vividly coloured and very dramatic and eye catching.

For me their work is both haunthing and alluring. It strangly scares me a little bit but I just cant stop looking at it. I find the work captivating. For me the work is interesting and informative about folklore in Europe, their ghoulish creatures capture that spookiness of the folklore but in a manner that remains cheery and colourful. Thsi for me is what I think of what I think of folklore and folk art.

This was a thoughly enjoyable little part of the exhbitions that I saw, whilst there.

BIG NEWS!

Before I go and Forget to memtion this huge, wonderful news..

During the month of August and maybe beyond, I will be teaching photography at the Sue Ryder Day care Centre to the Tuesday group 🙂 This is really good news and I have been in talks about it for a month now so it is great that it is now offical and I can talk about it! This is wonderful experience for me and I cant wait to begin. I shall keep everyone posted.

NOW on to “lesson” plans

Mini Photo Shoot – Evaluation

Overall, this shoot was a blast! just what the doctor ordered. I was getting rather bored waiting for my shoot next tuesday with the SueRyder. For this shoot I used my sister as the model and had lots of fun attempting to fit her into a box. I did this because I wanted to try and create different illusions of my sister in and out of this box. The reason for this was that I was interested in the illusions that you could create with the camera and generall without the use of photo shop. My inspiration for this shoot as I have said in the previosu blog post was Clare Strand. I have been looking at her work for a while now and have been very intertested in trying something similar to her work myself. I guess I finally got round to doing it!

 

Images will be following as soon as I edited them slightly (just the ususal convertion to black and white and maybe a bit of spot removal)

My Work

Now that the exhibtion is finished, I can finally put my work up online for everyone to see. This is for all of those people who didnt grace the exhibtion with their presence!  (you missed out, It was amazing!)

Artist Statement:

Epidermolysis Bullosa is a genetic skin condition that affects 1 in 17,000 births every year. There are approximately 5,000 people in the UK alone that have been officially diagnosed with it. Epidermolysis Bullosa has three types: EB Simplex, Junctional and Dystrophic. Although there are three very specific forms of EB each case is different and each case has its own set of unique problems. It is very painful rare condition that affects the layers of the skin and their ability to blind together. Therefore painful and large blisters form at the slightest irritation.

I was officially diagnosed with this hereditary disease when I was three years old. This was when I realised that I was different form other people and that a lot of people wouldn’t understand what it is like to live with this condition.

The main purpose of this project is to make people aware of this condition. I want to show them, what it is like for me to live with this condition and how it affects myself. I want to show what people who have EB have to cope with on a daily basis. This piece of work will encourage the viewers to ask how the illness affects the lives of those who suffer with EB, as well as how it could affects members of the family. I want to explore and question issues like what it is like to live with this condition, but most importantly what psychological effects it can have combined with what is portrayed as a means of coping with this painful condition.

The aim of this project is to show the effects of EB in a way that is thought provoking, engaging and eye opening at the same time. I will be using emulsion lifts as metaphors for how fragile the skin can be and, I hope that by telling an unconventional story of how I suffer with Epidermolysis Bullosa, then people will become more aware of this condition, and leave with their own opinions of the work and what it means.

Exhibition Night

So last night was the private viewing for our exhibition. I can safely say that I am extremely tired after all the mad rushing about that we did yesterday getting everything ready. It was a bit touch and go at one point, because when i left to go and get ready my work still wasnt up on the wall. However Thanks to Elliot Munns (http://elliotmunns.wordpress.com/) it did get put up in time and looked fabulous! SO a huge thanks to Elliot for helping me, he is a huge star and I really appreciate all your help.

Anyway onto the night itself. This was wonderful and the space was really quite full. This I think made us all really happy, as I know that I was nervous about how many people would show up.  But saying that It was really good and I am extremely happy with how everything has happened. My work seemed to get generally possitive reviews from people (my sister had strategically placed herself by my work and eaves dopped on everyones conversations to hear what they were saying). It definatly got people talking about it as quite a few didnt understand the piece. However like the fabulous Gemma Marmalade told me, “I should not be discouraged by them, and continue to work hard”.

Images of the exhibition space will follow as soon as I load them up.

And we are finished!

After a long day pushing to finish all the moulds/casts/emulsion lifts, I am finally finished! However this would not be possible without the help of my wodneful assisstant, Sophie Youngs, who kindly helped me mend toes and finger back on to casts and generally dry them. SO thank you to her.

Here she is happily beavering away mending toes and filling holes 🙂

Exhibition Update

Had a few problems over this week, with regard to making moulds and lifecasts. It turns out they are not as easy as they look to make. So Thursday, on my day off, I made a total of 4 moulds. Doesnt sound like a lot but I found it quite difficult to get it right. So there I was with my feet And hands stuck in the mould stuff that dentists use to make false teeth for about half an hour each time. I did it longer than was requred because i wanted to make sure that it was really soild. I needed to make alot of casts out of one mould. I had done it before and removed my hand too soon and it fell apart, or it went solid before i could get my hand in. Anyway the moulds were finished and smelt of mint.

After that was done I made, I made a few casts every night. To help spread the load a bit. little did I  know that they take forever to dry! Until disaster struck. I accidently knocked over the water into the bowl of plaster. However I didnt realise that until I came back into the room half an hour later. By that time it had gone soild and was unusable. So by Sunday evening I was thoroughly disappointed with myself and rather pissed off that I hadnt completed all twelve of my lifecasts.

Today I will be very busy finishing the final three and getting them ready.

Exhibition Update

Yet another early start. Today I will first catching up on what others did yesterday, with regard to building and moving the exhibition boards from one part of college to another. From what I gather quite alot of it was done and all that is really left is to actually finish building the boards in the spaces. This is still quite a lot of work to be done and not a lot of time to get in done in. So the mission today is to finish the hard work and get everything done so that monday we can begin puting up the framed work, or in my cast the lifecasts.

Images of our hard work can be found at http://fivebyfourphotography.wordpress.com/

Exhibtion Update

So after a good couple of days of painting and mountian of  blister later, I have found myself with a day off.  Only because I cannot walk at this moment in time, but I thought that I would take this time and use it wisely and effectively, so.. Im makeing lifecasts of my hands, legs, feet and arms. It sounds strange but I will explain. The purpose of this is because of a mixture of things. One: I wanted my work at the exhibiton to stand out from the other work that will be there (no pun intended). Two: the exhibition of the images is integral to the success of the work. By this I mean that in order to fully understand the work it needs to be exhibited in this manner. And three: it enhances the meaning be hide the work, which is what it is like for me to live with EB as well as how and where I am effected by it. So quite simple really!

So as I now have all the ingredients to make my lifecasts  I will begin. Images, along with new updates will follow sortly as soon as I get my hands back.

 

Exhibition in 5 days!

So just to keep everyone up to date. It has been very very busy since my last post but i wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of what is going on!!

So the last couple of days, I and a few other of the Collective have been very busy preping for the exhibition. By preping i mean moving and painting several coats of paint on boards that are almost ten times bigger then me!  We worked in groups and just powered through all 91 of the boards, using team work and a shed load of paint! This has been a mamoth job and  those who did help they deserve a large round of applause and a pat on the back! So well done and thank you.

Anyways that is what I have been up too and to see images of our hard work head on over to our blog: http://fivebyfourphotography.wordpress.com/