Dissociation (Part 3: Introducing poetry and mixed media pieces)

A trip into London made anxieties spike and that feeling of disconnect stronger; despite being around so many people I felt distant and nothing that day felt real. These are feelings that frequented before and after the London trip, in and out of the studio, and disrupted my ability to work - this was something that I hadn't anticipated at the beginning of the project.

Inspired by the work of Gerhard Richter that i'd seen that day at the Tate Modern, I started to take photographs as I walked around London that I could paint over later. My camera, for the most part, remained at my side and I took photos blind with no framing or adjusting. As predicted the end results were blurred and the white balance was off etc, but, as has been the case throughout all of the work thus far, these mistakes were welcome ones and only helped to support the concepts I was trying to explore with this project.

(Approx 8.3in x 11.7in, Acrylic paint)

The physical texture of the paint in both the photo above and the experiments on the sketchbook spread below were really satisfying and also grounding, the likes of which contradict the way I feel about dissociation, the same can be said for the fabric pieces further down in this post. (I spent a good amount of time after completing the pieces in this post just touching them, and made other people in the studio touch them too, they felt as satisfied as I did)

At this point I already had a final piece idea in mind, what you haven't seen in these posts in all of the experimenting and research I have done because I didn't want to make all of these posts really long, and the use of fabric and photographs didn't fit in with that idea but these can be seen as their own stand alone pieces.

(Approx 15in x 19in, Fabic, acrylic, wool)

(Approx 15in x 19in, Fabic, acrylic, wool)

These fabric pieces are one of my favourite pieces from this project. Since the beginning of the foundation course, I have been trying to find a way to incorporate writing into my art and I was really happy that I managed to here, in this project. The poems in this project (the likes of which will be written up in a transcript in the next post to accompany the installation piece) started off as something I was doing to take a break from my project without straying too far away from the project ideas - I hadn't realised that they would be a crucial element to my work.