Systems/Re-imaging

Theme:
As a continuation of the initial project, I have further been exploring systems, particularly postal and mapping. Which relate to place and the way in which it is ordered in visual formats.

The subject matter is my recent experience of moving house and changes in personal circumstances. I saw the aspect of relocation and change is pertinent subject matter, in addition to tension between public and private realities. Drawings on utility bills of various interior scenes, which have changed over the past few months, reflecting my everyday personal space. I also started collecting all the envelopes that bills and various forms of correspondence arrive in, including letters from family at home. These envelopes have a variety of different patterns, design to obscure the contents of the envelope. I saw these patterns as a form of code/ scrambling/ camouflage design to keep secrets. I saw this as a visual code for private situations which inverted become public.

On the theme of place I was looking at the local area that I live in. Even though I have moved four times over the past three plus years, I have stayed in the same area and postcode. I explored the idea of map/plans based on an emotive rather than geographical scale.

Whilst exploring the themes suggested in the assignment task, I started looking at the botanical drawings and thinking about plants and how they not only have always been an important part of my family heritage (on both sides of my family are a long line of keen gardeners and collectors of plants), but they form an important part of my daily life. In my job I teach students with disabilities about growing vegetables. Since moving to this house I have colonised the concrete front garden with pots of all sorts of plants. Tending these plants has given me a sense of hope and grounding about life and how to live.
I realised that some of them were indigenous to South Africa, and this got me thinking about how plants are a symbol of British imperialism par excellence. Just as the familiar plants give me a feeling of being at home, their very presence here in England is as tied up in a colonial past as my own existence and situation. Also on reading Marion Arnold’s Women and Art in South Africa (1996), I saw there was a further connection, as the earlier women artist in colonial South Africa, were restricted to painting local domestic scenes and fauna and flora by gender roles. This is an idea that I would like to explore in the future.

I have included other things that I have been working on, which do not relate directly, but are part of the process in a way.

Drawings

Experiments/ Work in progress

Workbook Pages

Text and Art

Cataloging system for images and idea. Cards: 15x15cm, Box: 16x16x52cm






In the UK, a utility bill is like gold, in order to open a bank account you have to have a utility bill, however it is difficult to get one unless you already have a bank account and some kind of proof of address. Many people wait months before they can open a bank account because they stay in rented bedsits which include all bills.

Drawings from my noticeboard, copies of post cards received from home.



Pages from workbook


Texture samples, mixed media, 5x10cm each




Sample book, Handmade book: Card, Paper, fabric samples. A4


Charcoal and acrylic on paper, 50x110cm
Vector drawing, dimensions variable.


Assignment 1:
TEXT AND ART

The aim of this project is to document my experiences since moving to the United Kingdom. For this reason I am using my everyday life as source material, day to day activities that at first seemed new and exciting but have now seem completely normal. Despite having adjusted to being here, I still feel somewhat displaced. I have kept journal since being here, but have found the whole process to be quite fragmented, feeling quite lost. I have many uncompleted artworks, half finished animations, miscarried ideas that stay fixed in my workbook pages. I wanted to work out some way of categorising/ / cataloging/ archiving my work in a system, which would hopefully help me to see where it is all going. This system would be both digital (in the form of a website) and physical (Inspired by the ‘card system’ used in academic research, where you would have one idea on each card) So, this project is not only about documenting my experiences in a new country, but documenting my artistic processes.

Webpage Maps- Tube map, local area Bills Letters and postcards Travel documents Timelines ‘foreign’ words/languages

Media
Because digital technology is has become increasingly part of my everyday life, used to communicate with family and friends, research, work, it is an essential part of my life. The internet is a prime example of how text and images are used together and apart in order to communicate a message.
Watercolour drawings, digital animation, photography, embroidery, vector drawings

Technique

Scanning and photographing, organising systems, archiving and documenting
Collecting and scanning and drawing images.