FURTHER BODIES

This past year I have just wanted to experiment with physical media more. As a result, my thinking has moved away from finalised print designs to working with marker pens and collage, and it’s only been in the last few months that I’ve returned to the computer to synthesise my findings. 

The iconography has continued. Muscle bound figures, motionless in forest, swamp or cityscape. I find the anonymity created by working with silhouettes strangely liberating; the outline becomes a field to be decorated, camouflaged, vandalised. The men resemble fetishised objects and I am drawn to the concept of “the gimp”, perhaps the ultimate expression of anonymised identity, the human being as a plastic toy. As social media encourages us to project ourselves as products to be liked, swiped, shared and followed, we become progressively objectified ourselves. The silhouette seems like an appropriate vehicle to express identity, or rather non-identity, people as logos, branded like cattle. 

These themes were not consciously devised, but arose, like daydreams and nightmares from the psychoanalyst’s couch, as I worked.

Because I felt more confident with the imagery and processes, I used a slightly larger scale of image, moving from A4 to A3.