Friday 24 October 2014

Grayson Perry - Who Are You

Link to the show:
Grayson Perry - Who Are You

Perry is looking at identity through power, gender, fame & religion in this first episode. He studies his subjects in a unique way, he doesn't just look at them as a physical person, he looks at their background and how they are as a person to inspire the portrait. I love his approach to portraiture as he captures more than just how the person looks and also he does not make just paintings or drawings, he makes objects. His religious portrait takes the form of a Hijab (headscarf), his power portrait was a smashed vase to represent the cracks in the persons identity, gender identity was shown as a sculpture and for the fame portrait he did a Elizabethan miniature portrait.

For me the most interesting was the gender identity and the pressures on teenagers and how they have to justify their identity everyday. "told my identity is between my legs not where my heart is" was a really moving statement from the person going through male hormone replacement therapy.
Fame (Screen capture from the program)

Religion (Screen capture from the program)

Gender (Screen capture from the program)

Power (Screen capture from the program)

Vikki Stevens is an emerging artist interested in many areas including body image, mental health and abstraction. Her latest series of work aims to show how images and perceptions of women are “put- together”/ manufactured, and how these images and perceptions affect how women feel about their own body image. Vikki’s ideas for her artwork are expressed in mediums such as paint, collage and sculptural objects, mostly incorporating repurposed images from magazines and found documents. Artists such as Tracey Emin and Hannah Hoch have a large influence on her work. Both the personal perspective and distorted images play a major part in creating pieces that discuss personal as well as cultural issues within mainly the western world/media sphere. Stevens is planning on developing her work into a more abstract sphere to investigate feelings that she has herself and how she can communicate them by using and developing abstract techniques, continuing with collage as a starting influence. Currently the materials and processes she has used in her past work and the work in development are having a large impact on how the work develops and the message behind the work is entirely open. Rather than having a stand out message Stevens is now moving towards a more indirect way of working, focusing more on feelings rather than statements. Current concerns within the work reflect how Stevens feels about herself in day-to-day life and how outside influences affect her and her work. More specifically Stevens is dealing with feelings of anxiety, panic attacks, depression and how she feels as an individual in the world. Artists such as Gerhard Richter, Barbara Kruger, Yago Hortal and Steve Salo are having a large impact on the current work in development.

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