Thursday 18 June 2015

Eating disorders and disordered thinking

I was debating with myself whether to delve into the very clichéd and reused art that is 'Eating Disorder Art' but after I thought about it I realised a lot of issues do not address the mentality that comes with an eating disorder. Eating disorders are their own category, they do not belong to the mental health category, or at least a lot of people seem to forget that their is a complex mental battle going on in the mind of someone with an eating disorder.

Image Source

I feel that a lot of the physicality of eating disorders has been shown before in many ways, I'm more interested in the mental side and how individuals with eating disorders perceive themselves.

Following on from my magazine work using a men's fitness magazine I thought it would be interesting to work with a women's fashion magazine and to use my own added text to promote a very different mission to glamour.

(See images below)

Front Cover: V Magazine issue no. 94

Double Page spread: A3 Magazine and printed text overlay

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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.

Vikki Stevens

Thursday 18 June 2015

Eating disorders and disordered thinking