Saturday 22 November 2014

Does anything shock us now?

Does anything shock us?

As I was thinking this week I thought about how shocking Bowie was back in the 60's and 70's and that now he isn't as controversial as he used to be. Men wearing make up and tight clothes is not an unusual thing now in our society also the issue of his sexuality back then would not be a big deal now as being gay or bisexual is very out in the open.



When I was thinking about it in a broader scale I asked myself, does anything shock us now? With so much information on the internet and TV etc. are we all desensitised to everything out there? Not much that comes on our newsfeeds or television shocks us now as we hear about so much of the same thing repeatedly. For example the Jimmy Savile child abuse case was really shocking when it first came out but now there is a flood of similar cases coming out that it has lost its shock value.

I don't want to make controversial or shocking work but I am interested in what is shocking to society now in relation to identity (gender and sexuality).

What does shock me however is double standards in particular that men can go out in public with no nipple coverage but women cannot.



 What is the difference? They all look the same and have the same responses, so why is it acceptable for men and not for women? Isn't that double standard shocking?

What else in terms of gender do we still find shocking? 

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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