Development: More Experiments and Display Ideas

As I begin to think about display, I want to first reflect on the work I have created up until this point…

Firstly, we have the masks as objects that I have made to express certain things I associate with lockdown – these have been inspired by tribal masks (e.g. traditional Witch Doctor Masks) as well as protective masks like the gas mask and contingent masks (inspired by Fiscli and Weiss, and Erwin Wurm).

On reflection, I don’t feel that these masks represent my own individual experience particularly well and I also feel that they are perhaps too illustrative/precious… however, I think it is important to include them in my final display, as part of the narrative that represents my expression ‘in the moment’, despite not wanting to take this idea forward.

So, these masks will be included in however I choose to document the other ‘Lockdown Masks’ – I don’t feel that this will look out of place as I have got other masks from the beginning of the series that were a bit more ‘precious’, and involved me manipulating materials rather than just using objects as they were readymade.

I’ve been reflecting why I have enjoyed making the ‘Masks’ using readymade objects around my home rather than manipulating the objects as this is something that I used to be a major part of my practice – but I think I am enjoying this style of working better and feel that it works more effectively to capture my experience as the creations capture that ‘in the moment’ reflection more, and are almost like snapshots of my day…. they are quite ‘voyeuristic’, almost like CCTV footage. Rather than being purely illustrative, I feel like they combine enough humor and satire with feelings that are relatable during lockdown, so that they become representations of how I’m feeling without the image being too far removed from reliability – they combine both realism and surrealism.

I’ve begun experimenting with display, and at the moment am displaying the series in a grid (I think I will do 7 in a row, rather than 4) – but I think this idea is really effective, similar to a film reel/CCTV footage or a zoom call with the squares. I’ve also been playing with the idea of highlighting the different voices by making having them in colour or framed (yellow frames match the zoom call speaker box), as opposed to my images which are in black and white (referencing archives/documentary photographs).

I also experimented with ‘collage’ – laying objects over the top of my passport photo – whilst I think this is effective, I don’t think it is something I want to display as I don’t feel they necessarily express my experience. But this idea of combining objects with image is something that I want to take into AP2 – and I’m particularly interested in combining screens/digital images with objects and flat images.

I’ve begun experimenting recently with the idea of masks/masking in a digital sense and have been experimenting with filters, perception and voyeurism. Digital being one of the themes in my lockdown series and perhaps one of my ‘personas’ – this is again an idea that I would like to develop in AP2 (some of these images may feature in the display as part of my narrative), but for now I am focusing on displaying my current series of work and creating a plan for my participatory work.