A Stary Night
I made this drawing from December 2020 to February 2021 as a direct correlation to how I feel about my vulnerability and insecurity in a safe haven from the world on earth. As I look down beyond the bridge, as if it is not there, I feel the protection of the sky on a stary night. Sensations and feelings of the un-touchable world beyond the planet, this place far above the earth, yet I feel a tension between my world beyond the universe and at the same time being just visible yet far enough away to feel the safety that at any second, I can be invisible to people that want to rule my life.
1Louise Bourgeoise's drawings Femme Maison 1945-1947 that show signs of surrealism illustrate the same instable construction. As a code, they infer visibility and invisibility, fear and everyday life, hiding away and being kept enclosed.
Drawing mixed media, pencil, pastel, gouache.
Electric Chair, Body Departed
This imagery originally came from a picture I took at Broad LA in January 2020. Andy Warhol Electric Chair from his Death and Disaster series which started in 1962. I was looking at using this still to illustrate sinister thoughts that unintentionally pop into my head on a constant base. Warhol hand-printed images onto canvas and translated this technique to paper. They were screened in a way that retained a graininess; thus each image was slightly different, giving them their own authenticity. Walden (p36.37) discusses Foster’s description of Warhol in his series of screenprints of Nine Jackies and of Warhol’s series of screenprints depicting violence, death and celebrity status, he talks about the mimesis here being a form of mechanical mimesis and goes on to say that the affective experiences of these works de-sentisied the viewer through repetition of mass consumption. I am also drawn back to Louise Bourgeois's self-representation and her discussion “a man cut his wife into pieces and makes a stew of her” and the phycological experiences she went through and channelled into her work.
Electric chair, body departed resonates this feeling of ephemeral trepidation.
In My Hands
July 2020
Identity, my own self-awareness and the notion of looking at myself the inner thoughts, the sensations and the non-verbal presence of the everyday. These are the ongoing issues that inform and, in some way, hold me back, yet at the same juncture expand my juxtapositions of articulating my practice. I look at Cindy Sherman, as a performance artist, using a masquerade of each still photographic image of herself, as a form of symbolism and gender identity. A way of looking back at ourselves like the viewer's gaze. The drawings In My Hands and COVID 19 Trapped in my Body, No Way Out, is my form of using the male body, my own feelings of entrenchment. It is a kind of exposing instabilities the allure of an explicit image of opening up vulnerability, instability a symptom for interpretation in this uncertain epidemic plague-like conditions we live in.
What I am learning during this time is the act of making work in response to our current lockdown is definitely more challenging than I thought it would be.
Body in a Bag
2018
This dawing is a direct result of my feelings and emotions toward the horrific crime on Eurydice Dixon. After her death, there was a public outcry and silent protest gatherings in relation to her and other crimes of women just going about their lives. The protest brings attention to the vulnerability of women that should not have to fear walking alone at night.
Eurydice Jane Dixon (10 November 1995 – 13 June 2018) was an Australian comedian and actress who performed regularly at comedy venues in Melbourne, Victoria. She was found murdered at Melbourne's Princes Park on 13 June 2018; her death was the subject of much media attention.
