Exposure

Post 1: Degree Show Work

This post is my Degree proposal before Coronavirus lockdown. I have had to adapt and change it due to the  circumstances. However, my main idea for the sculpture has stayed the same and I managed to carry on making it.

Post 2: My Final Artist Statement

My Art practise Statement :Artists Practise Statement 300 words

I made a second statement about my final sculpture and how coronavirus had impacted my work.

Post 3: Degree Show artists

Artist 1. Sculpture Artists

Artists 2. Plastic Pollution Sky News Documentary

artist 3. Olafur Eliason

artist 4. Jean Francois Bolce

 

Consolidation

Artists Statement

My Final Artist Statement

Documentation Posts

1. Making the seaweed and using a heat gun and soldering iron
2. Coral Reef
3. Making Rocks for the base of the Sculpture and Learning Paper Mache Clay
4. Making the Fish Part 4
5. Making the Fish Part 5

Contextualisation

1. Kenny Scharf- Blox and Bax-
2. Veronika Richterova
3. Pam Longobardi-Bounty, Pilfered
4. Bodys Isek Kingelez

 

Artists Practise Statement 300 words

I am writing a statement based on my final degree show. I have challenged myself and made a sculpture, which is something I have never done before. I successfully made a sculpture that demonstrates the seriousness of plastic pollution and it highlights that plastic is damaging our oceans, sea life and even in the depths of the ocean because it is harming coral reefs too. I made a 2 metre high sculpture that I had to display in my garden. I successfully met my goal and I did not use any paint or glue. I can also proudly say I made this sculpture entirely out of recycled plastic or reused old materials. Nothing was bought. Therefore, when I am finished with the sculpture everything can be recycled. The challenges I faced when making this sculpture were that I didn’t have enough space to display all my work. Overall, I made 50 plastic fish but, due to the lack of space I could only display 30 of them. I would have benefitted from the studio because I would have made my sculpture much larger. I had to confine everything to the space I had available. I would have used the studio walls to display even more fish.  There were benefits to displaying my sculpture outside, this was due to the wind blowing the fish from side to side, making the fish appear as though they were swimming. This made the sculpture even better to watch because it caught my eye and attention. This wouldn’t have happened inside the degree show. I am happy that I challenged myself because I have developed my skills even further and can say I am a sculptor. I will take these skills with me after university and make more sculptures because I thoroughly enjoyed it.

My Final Sculpture

This is a post about my Final Degree Show work. I went with the sculpture even though I knew I wouldn’t be displaying it in university. I wanted to make a sculpture that highlights the plastic pollution in our oceans. I wanted the sculpture to bring awareness to the public that the plastic is harming our sea life creatures and its even damaging our coral reefs. I wanted to make this sculpture entirely from recycled plastic and repurposed or reused materials. I successfully made this without any adhesive so all of the plastic can be recycled yet again. The cost of this sculpture was nothing.

I collected all the recycled plastic and repurposed materials myself, before the Coronavirus. It took weeks to make all 40 seaweed and corals from plastic bottles and 50 plastic fish. I repurposed the wood from an old shed. I used recycled cardboard and toilet rolls. I learnt many new skills from doing this and it demonstrates how much I have developed as an artist at my time at university. I  learnt how to paper Mache clay for the rock. I learnt how to make a sculpture but how to make art that costs nothing and all from recycled materials. I am most proud of the sculpture because I made all this without using glue so everything on this sculpture can be recycled again and nothing was damaged. I learnt how to make the plastic bottles into seaweed by using a heat gun and soldering iron, something I haven’t used before and a technique I learnt along the way. The bottles can even be cut apart and be made into plastic fish.

This was my first sculpture and I am pleased with how well it turned out. Coronavirus didn’t stop me that much. I had planned on making this before the Lockdown anyway. The only disappointing thing is that I could only display 30 of my plastic fish I wanted the studio walls so I could display even more of them. I also would have made this sculpture larger by making it even taller than 2 metres. I also would have extended the base and made it stronger so I could have more fishing rods with even more fish. My garden wasn’t big enough to fit anymore in. You can see I did have to squeeze around the sculpture to try and video it. I did my best to capture how it looks. I did propose to make canvases as well I decided not to use these in my degree show because I had no studio walls and making 90 plastic bottles took up a lot of my time. I focused purely on the sculpture and making it look good because it is the main focus of my work.

I benefitted from displaying it outside not just because of the light making the plastic look reflective but because the wind was making the fish move so the plastic fish looked as though they were swimming and as I walked around the sculpture I felt like I was swimming amongst the fish. it gave me a good sense of how it would feel to be swimming amongst plastic and the environment the sea life creatures are in every day.

 

My Final Artist Statement

My artwork reflects the ecological effects of climate change and plastic pollution. Ecosystems and life on Earth are subjected to global changes, resulting from human activities. My artwork highlights our carelessness with discarding plastic which as a result has caused our oceans to become polluted.

I have demonstrated new techniques and ideas to showcase the serious environmental issues we face with our planet. I am especially interested in creating work highlighting plastic pollution. I have made my first ever sculpture entirely from recycled plastic and repurposed materials.

I have shown a passion and drive to make a stand about this topic. I personally believe I will get people to rethink how they reuse plastic or discard their waste. I have shown that plastic pollution is harming our oceans and the living organisms that live within it. That in time will essentially are harm us too.

I want this sculpture to remind us of our sinful act disregarding plastic that has ruined our seas and our planet. The sculpture was made to bring awareness about plastic pollution, but I also want it to be a reflection on how you can prevent more plastic from being dumped into our oceans.

My work fits in with contemporary art because I bring a new perspective on plastic pollution. I have made art in my own interpretation of what I think will be enough to change people’s perspectives on the matter.

My Business Card

This is my Business Card if someone wants to have a commission piece. I like the simplicity of it. I have included my contacts such as my Email Address, phone number and blog address. The blog address is so people can find out more about my art practise. To improve this business card I could add images of my artwork. This is included in my Professional Development Presentation because this is how I get people to contact me and when I made a commission I add about 4 of these cards in with the artwork so people can pass this on to their friends. It allows me to get recognised as an artist.

Plastic Pollution Sky News Documentary

I found that researching into my topic and plastic pollution really helped form my ideas and as a result formed my sculpture. I watched The plastic pollution documentary on Sky News. It was really helpful because I learnt about the Coral Reefs and how the plastic is damaging the Sea Life. It was important that I watched documentaries like this and researched about my topic before hand because it shaped my ideas. I wouldn’t have known to include the coral reefs as an important part within my sculpture because I mainly started off focusing on the fish. This documentary shaped my ideas. I began researching into the corals and found out they go white when they die because the pollution from plastic is harming them. They should be brightly coloured and alive and moving but ones that are effected are white and still. These effect the fish, they loose their homes and food sources. This effects the fish which as a result effects us. because we consume the fish.

Here is the link to the video:

https://news.sky.com/video/special-report-plastic-pollution-in-our-oceans-10742377

Olafur Eliason

The Weather Project.

This artist has inspired me to make my sculpture piece because, he has deep engagement with society and the environment within his artwork. He is mostly inspired by the beautiful weather such as the sun.
The most inspirational piece of his was when he tried to recreate a sun within a museum. This installation became known as the weather project. He made it in 2003, Tate Modern London. He was fascinated by how something so simple such as the weather could bring strangers together. I believe he created the sun in the museum as a way of bringing people together.
It was the reaction of the people that is so inspiring. Whenever someone displays their artwork there is no telling what the audience will do. In this case when people saw Eliasson’s recreated sun, the audience lead down on the floor and looked up and admired it. This did this as a reaction of the artwork. I would hope my sculpture gets a reaction. Not so much in the sense of it being beautiful like the sun. My sculpture should get more of a shocked reaction because it is demonstrating the seriousness of plastic pollution not beautiful nature.
He inspired me to make a sculpture on what I feel is happening with the world. I am demonstrating the seriousness of plastic pollution through artwork, just like what Eliason has done.

Icebergs

I also like this artwork from Eliason because it represents our existence and what we are doing to the planet. Our existence has caused the ice to melt and climate change to happen. Olafur calls it  ‘your waste of time’, suggesting we as humans are the waste of time because we are damaging our planet. We are wasting time and not acting to save our planet. He brings the icebergs into a gallery exhibition, putting humans physical experience into perspective.

Kenny Scharf- Blox and Bax-

I looked at the artist Kenny Scharf. I wanted to see what I could display on my studio walls. I love how Scharf uses discarded plastic and the combination of electrical appliances to show the long term effects of plastic pollution. He uses old or discarded televisions and decorates them with recycled plastic, beads and waste to highlight the amount of discarded plastic. His work highlights the same environmental issue as my work. I want my sculpture to highlight the seriousness plastic pollution is having on the environment in our oceans, he just highlights it on land. I took inspiration from Kenny Scharf because I like how he makes his installation bright and colourful. I wanted my sculpture to be bright and colourful because that represents me as an artist. I wanted the colours to represent that there is still hope. Plastic pollution can be resolved and if we act and re think how we discard our waste and recycle our plastic the oceans wouldn’t be polluted. Scharf does this because he uses electrical appliances and waste from beaches to make his installations. Although my work doesn’t include the use of electrical appliances, I can relate to Scharf’s work on the bases that we both want to highlight how we need to be cautious on how we discard our waste. We also relate because we have both made art surrounded plastic pollution and like him I have used recycled plastic. Next time I will use plastic and waste found on beaches, but as I needed 90 plastic bottles It wasn’t possible to collect this for my sculpture and build it in time for my degree show.

Pam Longobardi-Bounty, Pilfered

I chose to look at the artwork by Pam Longobardi. I was inspired by her artwork because she highlights plastic pollution in her artwork but she includes who the plastic pollution is harming the most, sea life creatures. I can relate to this artist because I also want to make a sculpture that represents who the plastic is harming the most. I want to represent that it is fish, jelly fish and even down tot he depth of the ocean because it is harming coral reefs. She uses discarded and washed up plastic and debris from beaches from around the world and makes sculptures and installations. I particularly was inspired by the sculpture Bounty, Pilfered because it highlights that a whales stomach fills up with plastic because they swallow the plastic and waste in with their food and cannot digest it. I already researched this when I made my three canvases for my exhibition. I made the whale on one of the canvases from a blue bleach bottle. My attempt wasn’t as obvious that this was why whales suffer from plastic pollution, but I will now take this idea forward for my final degree show. What I like about her sculpture is that it is made entirely from waste and recycled plastic. I also want to do this because it is best to make the topic out of the subject.