23.11.20 - New Project Theme - POWER

Power is a huge concept that covers so many ideas and concepts that it is difficult to choose where to take it, so I used this sheet of words to guide my thoughts and find topics that stood out to me. Many of the words I highlighted are recurring themes in music that I listen to so I feel connected to them in that way, and they also appear in other aspects of popular culture such as gaming and cinema, which I think are really important ways of dealing with and exploring difficult topics that might affect our futures or even current lives, such as war, frightening technological advances, and climate change. 


I started by making art work with text and to transition from my previous project, I took my pink theme to make a disconcerting clash of visual ideas. I masked off the letters and painted over with pink watercolour, then removed the tape leaving the word DESTROY in negative space. The soft playfulness of the pink wash is broken by the violence implied by the text and to me this represents how destruction is always occurring around us even when we don't see it or it is disguised in some way.


I liked the effect of using a single colour and decided to use black electrical tape in another experiment with text, this time with the word in positive space. The squareness of the tape creates a really blocky font that looks forceful and unmovable, which reminds me of how little control the people have over things like government and corporate corruption so it gives me a feeling of helplessness. 

The original idea of these drawings on paper cups was for everyone in the group to draw powerful figures on and then crush them, however when we arranged all of them together it looked really strong already. In this picture I arranged mine in a pyramid which tempts the viewer to knock it down due to strange human instincts. I think this experiment was also an interesting way to remove the power from the figures and reduce them to something destructible and weak.

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