See Double [You]

Home and Away

2009-05-09T19:49:00.005+01:00

(not the Australian soap)

Museum of Childhood had a little exhibition of this title showing Children's ideas of home. Most are dual nationality and consider their home to be both London and their countries of origin, feeling deeply rooted in both places.

These are drawings of the places that surround where they live. (sorry about the rubbish photos)

I decided to do my own on the bus home.

The all seeing eye

2009-05-09T16:40:00.007+01:00

Rewind to my birthday 2008.

I went and had really awesome cheesy gnocchi with my dad at the BFI.

At the time there was a video installation by Pierre Bismuth and Michel Gondry.

They projected the film throughout a whole room, moving the images along each wall and slowly taking away objects as the character loses his memory.

A clip from 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' was used to signify ideas surrounding memory loss. Although this is a separate theme to mine I found it visually connected with my project because aspects of home were being subtracted from the room as the video played out.

I have since started looking at how images, like buildings disintegrate over time.

Rather than items disappearing through the process of memory I have looked at how they disappear over the process of repetition.

Each item was copied around 50 times until the image disappeared. I will be making a series called "Losing It" looking at different aspects of the home. I chose the image of a key because they're often copied after being lost and are the only things we own to 'prove' we live somewhere.

Psycho buildings

2009-05-09T14:19:00.007+01:00

Loved watching the film for 'Conical intersect' by Gordon Matta-Clark.

Here's part of the footage but it might be difficult to see how good it actually looked. These are some images from the piece and a description of how it has inspired other pieces of architecture.

As I sat and watched it I got really excited about the prospect of finding an abandoned building to do something in. Anything. Just sort of play in. I find the skeletons of buildings and abandonment of something once beautiful really alluring somehow.

This is an image of Rachel Whiteread's 'Place' from the exhibition. Each house is beautifully lit and attention has obviously been paid to every one. The sight is impressive and I like how in such numbers any one particular home seems insignificant to the others. It reminds me of how looking over a view of London you wouldn't be able to pick out where you live yet are fascinated by the amount of people living out their lives in all these buildings.

Seeing this piece directed me to look at her other work where she casts the negative space of rooms within homes and even whole buildings.

Do Ho Suh's work is equally intricate and beautiful, it directly contrasts to Whiteread's as each detail is important to his memory of home.

Lucid

2009-05-06T22:43:00.003+01:00

This is from the same block of buildings where I used to work- I went back to visit the shop and it had been knocked down.

I'm going to use the images to project them inside homes.

Snowy February

2009-05-06T22:39:00.001+01:00

Holidays

2009-04-23T00:17:00.000+01:00

Summer '08

2009-04-22T23:08:00.006+01:00

I began by going back to the Shelley Hotel in Worthing where my Dad grew up, I thought it would be interesting to take some photos and see

what the building looked like after years of being uninhabited.

Turns out people live there now.

One of the occupiers is terrifying.

He seemed taller than your average human and wore braces over a dirtied wife beater which strained to hold in a more than ample paunch.

He told me to stop taking photos of the toilet unless I wanted to photograph him pissing.

We didn't stick around long after that.

SE15

2009-04-09T22:58:00.010+01:00

Rather than simply another thing to check after my inbox every morning I want to use this to lay down the ideas and themes within my final major project, so I can understand what it isI'm doing and hopefully get other people to understand it too.

My project is about home.

I'll tell you a story,

Which began 3 years ago sat on the steps of Camberwell College of Arts clutching my portfolio and furiously smoking the last of a very dry rollie that had been in my hand unsmoked for an hour on the M3.

I was there for an interview, wondering whether I should bother going in or not when suddenly I felt a wave of calm (possibly due to the nicotine), I sensed home and knew that I'd sit on these steps furiously smoking several more cigarettes in years to come.

I'm not saying this as an arrogant arsehole who KNEW their work was good enough to get in or anything. I just felt comfortable there which is that intangible feeling you get at the places you already do or will soon, call 'home'.

Through several sets of coincidences or fate (whichever you're happier with) I ended up living on Southampton Way in my first year (the town I'm originally from) and in my second just a walk away from a street in Dulwich where my Grandma and her sister once lived.

(this is the street in case you're interested)

So my third year project is about all these places we call home and also about some of those places that cease to be home.

Pimps, queens, queers.

2009-04-09T22:30:00.003+01:00

Who else may have been you before

2009-04-09T21:51:00.002+01:00

Bleak January sketchings

Procrasti-bacon

2009-04-09T14:06:00.000+01:00

Having cleared out the stinking fridge, baked bread (yeah, you heard) and swept all the floors cinderella styley I thought it was about time to get down to some serious work (what with the final term of my student life rapidly approaching) so.... what better way to put it off than create a blog?

I can justify this procrastination tool by telling myself that I'll use it to share the work I'm doing;

someone will stumble across my aimless witterings, photographs and drawings then immediately give me a job thus vindicating all said procrastinating.

Lovely.