When finding out what space I was allocated for the exhibition, I was partially disappointed as I was hoping for a corner or somewhere that my two submissions would have their own space to exist separately. Luckily for me, upon handing my spacing was slightly changed and my paintings are now hung directly opposite each other, I am really happy with this decision as it feels like my work is in conversation with each other whilst still remaining independent from one another and having their own space to breathe. Hanging my work was a fairly simple procedure for my first painting as it held up find with some screws tucked in the spaces of the box folds, my larger three dimensional piece however came with a few problems as I didn’t want any screws to be on display so they had to be installed behind the cardboard pieces that were fairly heavy when combined and were stuck to the wood with adhesive velcro and some glue, after a lot of tweaking it finally feels secure up on the wall so hopefully it’ll hold for the duration of the exhibition. I am very excited for the exhibition opening and hope that my work can speak for itself and open up conversations between the audience.

My exhibition proposal stated that I wish to arrange some of my smaller cardboard paintings into a puzzle-like arrangement. I got out all of my paintings and began swapping up their order until I was happy with how it looked and felt like it created a dynamic and thought provoking display. I went looking for some wood  to stabilise this entire endeavour and wasn’t sure what I was going to find but I ended up finding this large thin piece of wood with evenly spaced holes drilled across it, I thought this was quite visually interesting as it brought to mind a pin board, a place where people generally collect ideas to create a larger idea which is what I intended to do with my paintings. I had already begun working on these paintings before I selected them for my exhibition arrangement, I was finding I kept hitting a brick wall when I thought of them as individual pieces of work that would come together coherently, but the main progress of this piece really began when I started thinking of all of the smaller components as just a small part of the bigger picture. I brought this in to uni preparing to hang it before it was complete. I think creating the finishing touches to this whilst in the location of the exhibition really helped me get into a more professional mindset allowing my creativity to be more informed.

My colour lexicon over the last few years has varied a lot but I feel now more secure in my colour choices than I ever have. Recently I have a tendency towards bright and highly saturated colours as these feel suitable to me to address the rich and colourful history of trans people. I love using bright yellows, acid greens, bright pinks and oranges. I also like to bring in pale pinks and baby blue’s similar to those depicted in the official transgender pride flag, these colours to me are also meaningful in that society uses these colours to define their babies from the day they’re born, dressing them in pink or blue so that people don’t incorrectly define them, my use of these colours feels almost  like a satirical comment on the nature of society to confine everything to a binary system. This curation of specific bright colours, to me, is reminiscent of queer coding in which queer people would wear specific colours in order to identify oneself among strangers. I believe it makes my work stand out and become a statement about visibility.

Here are some of my attempts at using Hand sanitiser to print an image from an inkjet printer using OHP paper.

This is an edit of one of my Claude Cahun inspired images, I like this was there is a mirroring reflection with less detail creating a ghostly impression of the original image.

This is another edit of my Claude Cahun images, I upped the contrast and attempted to print this one on to tissue paper using Aloe Vera Gel instead of hand sanitiser because it had the correct amount of alcohol and I was intrigued how well it would work, I would not consider it to have worked as the aloe vera gel slightly dyed the image green and cause a lot of smudging and I wouldn’t say this image is very usable, I do think it has an interesting texture though.

These are some prints of my painting ‘The Lost and Found’, I really like how the very bright colourful image prints using this technique, it faded in areas and was very bright in others. Shown below are the results of me turning this printed photograph of a cardboard box net back into the original form of a crate, I found this to be a very interesting small and fragile object.

This painting was pretty much my passion project for an entire week. I locked myself in a room with just my paints and I and it created an accelerated learning environment. I personally believe this is one of the most successful pieces of work I have ever produced. I began this painting with some large unplanned sketches of what could be considered a gendered body and worked around this as the basis for the premise. It eventually evolved into a coalition of two beings, one being pulled or pushing itself away from the other. The first face began to take shape when I noticed it looked almost android-like, I wanted to lean in to this as I related to this idea of being on ‘auto-pilot’ when in hostile situations. The first figure has been blasted between the eyes with spray paint creating the impression of what most would assume is a bullet hole, I understand that this is quite dark in theme but it felt appropriate to address the darker side of shedding an old skin and some of the obstacles one might face such as suicidal thoughts – I like the fact that spray paint used was almost a neon pink, oftentimes seen as a very gendered colour, this character is literally bleeding pink. In the completed painting I also created another area of dripping spray paint along the lower abdomen, mimicking the scar I have from getting my appendix removed, this brought me close to the painting as it feels like a personal narrative to me and shares my scars. The second figure is unusual in its form as it’s slowly becoming more recognisable as a human body, I feel like the combination of these two figure creates something transitional between the two. I knew instantly when this painting was done that it was going to have to be featured in my exhibition work as I put my entire heart and soul into the production of this and I feel like I really hit the bullseye of what I have been aiming for since I began the exploration of gender within my artwork.

 

I have a long standing enjoyment in photography, particularly organised photoshoots. I have also always been a big fan of Claude Cahun’s photography work and consider them to be one of my biggest idols, I took these photos using an FM2 film camera in homage to Cahun. These are photographs of the negatives taken on my phone, which were then inverted, I find these images to be quite valuable, the inclusion of the film border gives a real physicality to the work and brings the attention to the process of partaking in a photoshoot rather than the subject itself. I definitely plan to make some adjustments to some of these, maybe bring in some colour and contrast. This whole process felt very therapeutic, to become an image of one of my idols and transform my mindset into that of them, looking back on the outcome, I understand it to have been somewhat transformative.

Though not visible in these photos taken of the negatives, on the wall behind me are the words ‘I am untrained’ mirroring Cahun’s famous expression ‘I am in training, don’t kiss me’. These words, as you will see, become more visible once exposed onto photographic paper.  To me, being so called ‘untrained’ is symbolic of my want for knowledge and full acceptance within myself  and society, it’s about my exploration into topics of gender identity and how I’ve barely scratched the surface of this broad and diverse topic.

The following painting is a self portrait that was done in a rushed moment of feeling the urge to paint something but not feeling in the mood to paint my usual style. I feel like it captures a certain sad essence about myself. It’s not a super skilled painting or anything but I had fun in the process so I like it.

When I first began using repurposed cardboard boxes as a canvas, it was because I liked the accessibility of it and I liked the feeling of a painting being an object with blemishes and tears and without straight edges compared to a two dimensional item. My attention towards the physicality of cardboard is still prevalent to this day, but my attention diverted slightly when I found an old wine box and took it apart to create a net of the original object, I really liked this idea of repurposing something that was done being used and turning it into a shape slightly more indecipherable than its original form. Similar to Robert Rauschenberg’s work with found cardboard, I became obsessed with the strength in such a fragile material and I really liked the idea of giving it a new lease of life.

Below are a few paintings that I made when beginning this exploration into nets. The first work titled ‘Earth Turns To You’ came from a particularly tough place, I was in a serious art block and this was made worse by the Ukraine crisis that is still ongoing, the idea of doing any of my regular work felt almost insensitive or shallow in comparison to the humanitarian crisis happening overseas. I found that a lot of my mindset when painting that was with Ukraine and the struggles of any war and my inability to comprehend why somebody would commit such atrocities. Despite this piece of work being somewhat off topic from the rest of my work, it felt relevant in regards to feigning optimism in a crisis, and it also paved way to a new era of abstract work for me, with more distinctive contrasts between colour and an overall more ‘clean’ look.

These paintings show my exploration into using cardboard as a larger surface than I have done in the past, part of the reason I decided to attempt a larger piece of work was to experiment with my new oil sticks. I found that upon using oil sticks on corrugated cardboard, it was a struggle to get a smooth uninterrupted line due to the textures surface, this could be seen as an obstacle to overcome but also possibly a tool at times. I don’t feel like these are particularly well informed or successful paintings or pieces of work, I suppose it was more of just an open space to experiment with new ideas for me. In the first painting I was aiming to see how I would feel about a piece of work that uses mainly primary colours, I quite liked this effect as I feel like it gave a child like nature to the piece. I  used an ink roller pen to create one line drawings, sometimes blind drawings on the surface and try to incorporate them as a piece of the painting, I also took the end of a paintbrush and scratched into some wet paint and wet oil stick creating some hidden text, I think this was visually interesting and added depth. Though I don’t consider these paints to be successful, I would say they achieved my aim of helping me be more experimental and discover some likes and dislikes so in that sense they were successful.