BA8 Documentation File

8/9/2019 BA8 Documentation File

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BA7 + 8

Documentation File

Fine Art

Ossie Williams

(1201275)


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Up until BA7, I elt my practice was somewhat monotonous. At the time, my interest inpsychoanalysis through the texts and writings o its ounders; Sigmund Freud and Carl G. Jung pushed meto create work that ocused on a constructed view o us as human beings.

I elt the social body constrained how the physical was perceived, and thus the physical experience o thebody is always modified by social categories. Tese perceptions all tied in with the question o personhood,how our past experiences, upbringing mould and shape us into the people we are today. Te many differentorms o ourselves we represent both psychically and digitally.

Subsequently, the past work I created in BA6 showed a degree o uncertainty and a lack oconfidence. Tis worked well with the subject o psychoanalysis, but I still elt I was unengaged with mystudio practice. Paintings took insufferable amount o time to finish whilst my drawings were short oconviction.

BA6 Studio Practice


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In BA7, I ound my interest in Art thoroughly shifed to contemporary visual culture. One o the concepts Iwas particularly wanted to ocus on, was Guy Debord’s concept o Te Spectacle. Situated during the cold wargeopolitical period, Debord argues ‘the spectacle is the present model o socially, dominant lie’; authenticsociety has been replaced by a representative image in the capitalist West and the communist East

Te notion in which where world is inundated by images, where we are constantly bombarded lef, right and

centre, on the screens o our phones, computers, and televisions. Tey ar outnumber the required amounto people to produce and use them. Tese images are a result o “the visual construction o the social field”(Mitchell, 2002). Insistent and omnipresent, they create the visual culture o our society.

I used this theme o ‘the spectacle in combination with the representation o post-colonial black identity.Moreover, I ocused on the black West Indian diaspora which, I elt was more relatable to as a St Lucian bornBriton. In the work o philosophy, Society o Spectacle, (Debord, 1967) situated during the cold wargeopolitical period, Debord argues ‘the spectacle is the present mode o socially, dominant lie’; authenticsociety has been replaced by representation in the capitalist West and the communist East.

From the 16th century, or nearly 350 years, European ships set sail to the West coast o Arica or thepurpose o the transatlantic slave trade. Here, waves upon waves o Arican slaves were presented not ashuman – individual conscious beings – but as potential uture commodities; to bought, sold and becomeanother man’s property in the New World. But or now, they were collected as exotic goods, documented andorcibly packed into the hull o a slave ship. o be bound and ultimately displaced in the Americas and theWest Indies.

In Capital (1867) Marx notes in capitalism, commodities are exchanged or value on a given market. Tiswas the predicament o the slave. But Slavery was more than this, especially one considers that “[capitalism]makes social relations o production and consumption appear to be relationships, and thereore objectified.”Tis is to say that it is not just the object and its physical nature that turn it into goods or a commodity, but

the social position in which it is placed. Furthermore, I argue that the production, trade, and representationo the commodity create the desire to claim ownership over that object: the black race as the Other.

Tis notion o Otherness combined with commodity ties into the state the West Indies has ound itsel in.Stripped o its natural resources, it is now described as “the most tourism-dependent region in the world”.

Archived photos o Guyana in the 1960s

BA7 Practice - Constructed Views


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In Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Part Two a gathering of prominent American Mafiosovisiting Cuba interrupt their dealings to celebrate a compatriot’s birthday. As they lounge on abalcony high atop a luxury hotel overlooking Havana, a cake, prominently displaying a colourfullyfrosted map of the island, is presented to the celebrants. The camera then zooms in as the cakeis cut and the island nation is symbolically dissected for the enjoyment of the wealthy Americanvisitors. This is a metaphor for the exploited condition islands in the Carribean were left in..

Tourism is a vital industry to Caribbean nation states. For some islands, structural adjustment,spiralling inflation, currency devaluations, trade liberalization and privatization havecombined to make tourism the backbone of their economies. Receiving strong governmentsupport, intense marketing campaigns combine a slick media in contradictory and paradoxicalfashions. Each nationbecomes complicit in the parade of reprehensible history served up for example as ostentatiousplantation inns, towering colonial structure, and friendly natives who live to serve—all made readyfor a new generation of Western adventurers in search of the contemporary El Darodo.

The Caribbean since the end of the slave trade through touristic and advertising discourses isrepresented as a ‘exotic’ getaway, in which one can shed social inhibitions for a therapeutic

dose of sun, sand and sex.

It is this constructed view of the Carribean being ‘exotic’ that made me question the West Indianidentity’s representation in the wider world. I immigrated from St. Lucia with my parents in 2004,leaving behind a culture that had been mine for 10 memorable years. It was only when I arrivedin a cold somewhat ethnocentric Britain that I began to realise how much an impact comingfrom that background had on both my persona and my identity as The Other. The question I alsoreceived from my peers at high school: “Don’t you miss the sun and the beach?” or “Why would

you come here?”.

The answer was very simple, to have a better opportunity than I could ever hope to obtain in St.Lucia.

A scene from The Godfather, Part Two.

BA7 + BA8 Practice - Constructed Views


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In Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (1997), Stuart Hall argued that the conceptof Otherness is derived from George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s concept of the dialectic; the colo-nial relationship of Master/Slave, where in the first instance the Master had absolute authority anddominion over the submissive slave, who in turn, has to unquestionably address the needs of his‘superior’, whilst fighting against his inner yearning for freedom. Nevertheless as time passes on,the slave becomes more adept in role, through this control of his responsibilities.

He transcends his Master, who is now dependent upon the slave to retain his identity as Master.The Other therefore, is dependent on binary oppositions, e.g. master/slave, white/black. Never-theless, I argue that Hegel’s approach in which the Other – the black subject – is represented invisual culture is over-simplistic, it fails to mention that one of these two opposites is dominant inpower.

In the past the adverse representation of the Other was used to condone the practices of Euro-peans on their subjectified slaves. Europe maintained the belief that through the presence of theirdominant colonial empires, civic institutions of law and the restraint of their sexual and social life,associated their society with the concept of ‘culture’. In contrast, they believed the blackexpressions of open emotion, reliance on customs and rituals, and their apparent lack of civil

institutions was a form of natural primitivism.

But the modern day constructed view people had of a West Indian as the Other, encouraged meto explore my identity as I remembered it. By scanning and using old albums and photos of mychildhood, I started to piece together the past through memory; combining the ontologicalchemical process of film and the digital graphical process of Photoshop, I created work that bothconstructed and documented life in the West Indies.

Screencapture o scanned images.


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There’s a certain sentiment of nostalgia in family ‘snapshots’, they lack a trained eye but to me,the composition of each subject, the washed colours and decay of the final prints certainly add toits ‘aura’: its uniqueness in this world of visual images.


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I started off by looking at the different ways I which I could experiment with the photos in Photo-shop. Incorporating my newfound research on Kara Walker (her style of black paper tableauxzsilhouettes) and using a newly acquired Wacom graphics tablet, I traced myself from an oldfamily photo.

But it felt surreal to completely black out my own face, it was almost as if I was erasing my ownidentity or existence in history. Or even that I was looking back on an image that was much moreantecedent than the actual photo I was experimenting with; one that was set during the 20thcentury perhaps.


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These are international phone-cards I scanned. They’re used to contact friends and family thatover special occasions like birthdays or Christmas. Seeing one of these immediately bringsback memories of the many long, telephone static-charged conversations I had with family

around the Caribbean. They’re are about size of a debit card, which on a further subtext rein-forces the notion of using a commodity to connect with the ones you love.

The aesthetic of these cards reinforce cultural identity as each island in the Caribbean has onethat portrays an important icon in everyday life. Whether it maybe a national sport, animal or justa nation’s noble laureates.

I then started to explore how I could form these images into compositions that mirrored thelifestyle and culture of the Carribean, whilst still maintaining underlying tones of a regionexploited as a form of commodity.


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Lesser Antilles, 2015. Print

LESSER ANTILLES was the first piece Icreated using a collage of 2 Phone

cards and an old photograph of Mymother, sister, aunt and myself.

The title refers to the a group of is-lands in the Caribbean Sea. Whichform a long, partly volcanic island arcbetween the Greater Antilles to theNorth-west and South America.

I chose this title first as it referenced the geographicallocation St. Lucia was situated in. It also connotates the

marginalisation of the West Indian identity when com-pared to other black identities.

One paticular motif I think symbolises this, is the opaquedespondent boy on the crescent moon, intently staringacross the Atlantic Ocean at the African continent. It isalike to a child watching on as his friends play whilst hesits on the sidelines, unable to join in.

Another geographical symbol I chose to bring attention was the silhouette of the island of St.

Lucia and the continent of South America, thereby, once again subtly bringing the Carribean intoviewer’s direct gaze, which in turn reinforces the notion of the West Indian identity to the viewer.


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Worth EC$40 , 2015. Print

WORTH EC$40 was another piece focusing onthe marginalisation of the West Indian identity. Asilhouette of myself as child again stands back-grounded to an image of a phonecard.

The title “Worth EC$40” refers to the EasternCarribean Dollar, the currency of eight of the ninemembers of the Organisation of Eastern Carib-bean States. One of which is St Lucia.

The paintlike textures of the phone card with itsvivid colours, combined with with the figures oflocals playing traditional music strengthened the

theme of The Other to the viewer. As the Car-ribean is known for its lively, high-spirited festi-vals like Carnival.

A final element in the piece, to underpin mybelief of the Carribean identity as being margin-alised was the severing of the “C” in Carribean.As well as having connotations of the resourcesof the region being exploited, it also remarkedon the independence each country gained from

their colonial masters. Half of the “C” was wholeand complete (Britain) and the other empty andhollow (West Indies)


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I particularly liked this one as my Dad was heavily into Jazz music when we lived in St Lucia.Unfortunately his interest in it has subsided, to say the least. Mainly because of the responsi-bilities he has at work. I left in the ‘decay’ through the watermarks at the top of the image as Ithought they supported the concept of UK having a profound impact on his person. It as if, immi-grating to a cold, wet Britain started to errode a very warm culture and identity.

St. Lucia Jazz , 2015. Print


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Fuelled by this new found way of working, I bought a Canon AE1 and Opticfilm scanner to contin-ue my exploration of constructing and documenting a certain view or gaze.When you compare film photography to digital, you begin to the notice the differences:

• One area where film is more desirable, is in natural light. The exposure isnt as profound inhighlights as as easily as digital cameras.

• It also reacts much differently to light, it captures a greater dynamic range as opposed to

most digital sensors• The higher the iso, the more drastic the film grain. When compared to a digital camera, thehigher the iso the more noise. I’ve never heard of anyone saying they like noise in a digitalphotograph but the film grain in a negative can add to the image.

I was paticulary attracted to the use o BW film in other to create a stark constrast to the work I created usingthe phonecards. Tis was new way to create work, as I could compose each photograph, shoot, develop, scanand finally edit to remove any scratches or dust on the film.

Developing FilmGuide

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2aLiZZqNmqsMlkyTEFRbTNiZUU/view?usp=sharinghttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2aLiZZqNmqsMlkyTEFRbTNiZUU/view?usp=sharinghttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2aLiZZqNmqsMlkyTEFRbTNiZUU/view?usp=sharing


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Norwich, 2015.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2aLiZZqNmqsX2pMTEJiN0tTckk/view?usp=sharinghttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2aLiZZqNmqsUVNWNE9uWjBWdEk/view?usp=sharinghttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2aLiZZqNmqsX2pMTEJiN0tTckk/view?usp=sharing


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https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2aLiZZqNmqsSnRoVkQ5enFrdjA/view?usp=sharinghttps://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2aLiZZqNmqsZjNWRjc0VmxvbDg/view?usp=sharing


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Dick Clark’s Top 12-7=5, 2014. Acrylic on Canvas board

DICK CLARK’S TOP 12-7=5 was my final piece in BA7. It depicts Dick Clark an American radio andtelevision personality pointing at his famous Top 10 board. But instead of names of chart hits, therows feature the major news headlines of 2014. The outbreak of Ebola, the Islamic extremist groupISIL, the fallout from the Global recesion that ended in 2010 and finally the 2014 riots in Ferguson,Missouri. I thought this would be and interesting way to refer to the constant bombardment of rep-

tetive news headlines we’re so used to seeing.

It also underlines the way in which broadcasters rearrange news segments and information to “tugat its viewer’s hearts.


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BA8 Documentation


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Whilst in BA7, I constructed a view based on my memory, for BA8 I decided to continue my docu-mentation into my diasporic West Indian identity in a different way; by combining both digital andanalog mediums into a collage that showed the end result of moving to Britain. I travelled backto Hemel Hempstead, a large town in Hertfordshire.Where a two bedroom flat called “LivingstoneWalk” was our first home away from home, in the United Kingdom.


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I started to realise that these images on their own, were completely void of any reference to WestIndies. To the viewer they were just stark B&W photos with surroundings noticeably in the UK. Ineeded to include elements that were compatible with the work I created in BA7.

One of the most noticeable symbols of another culture is a nation’s flag. So tried to subtly includesolid vectors of the flags of Guyana and St. Lucia.


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94 Livingstone Walk , 2015. Collage print

L W, again was a reerence to the flat my amily and I first lived in when we immigrated tothe Britain. Combining two images o the same location supported the idea that we were initially stuck in aquite destitute area.

Te intercom, like the phone cards in previous work was a symbol o communication or both the viewer tothe residents inside, and or the residents to amily overseas.

Finally, the superimposed St. Lucian flag on the 94 intercom dial, signalled to the viewer that someone oWest Indian origin clearly lived here.


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Borough of Dacorum , 2015. Collage print

Screencaptures of photoshop


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Small Team, Big Reponsibilities, 2015. Collage on Print


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I returned to a more traditional way o exploring my identity through the medium o oil paint. Using an oldalbum photo, I started a new piece on board o my sister, mother and brother called “School Run”

School Run, 2015. Oil on board


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Climb the Ladder, 2015. Ink on Canvas board

CLIMB THE LADDER is the second in a traditional approach to refering to my West Indian identity.This one is based on the colonial trade.

Colonial trade was one of the sources of the primitive accumulation of capital. Under these con-

ditions, the primary components of colonial trade was the slave trade and the sale of poor-qual-ity wares at high prices in the colonies. It also depended on the outright exploitation of thecolonial nations through which unequal exchange ocurred where the colonies were graduallyassimilated into the world capitalist economy and turned into agricultural and raw material ap-pendages of the capitalist countries like the British and the Dutch Empire.

I tried to incorporate techniques similar to the collages I created in previous work by superim-posing the figures on a ladder in the foreground, whilst a modern day trade boat stands in thebackground.


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Stuart Hall , 2015. Oil on board

Stuart Hall was a Jamaican born cultural theorist that based his studies on West Indian diasporaand race in visual culture. I heavily referred to his work in my dissertation so I thought it was onlyfair to paint a portrait of him.


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For my last series of work I wanted to focus on major themes that I think have an impact on theblack community as a whole. Again using photoshop, I created collages that explored the issuesthe black race faced both in past and present day.

The imagery I sourced for my work was from Jet magazine; an American weekly marketed to-ward African-American readers first issued 1951. Jet is notable for its role in chronicling theAmerican Civil Rights movement from its earliest years as well major events such as the Mont-gomery Busy Boycott, the March on Washington in 1963 and the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.


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Black Heroes, 2015. Collage print

B H is the first in a series o pieces that explored the issue o the representation o race in themedia. Tis in paticular reerenced Bill Cosby’s accusations o sexual assault by over 40 women.


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Mother, Jugs & Speed, 2015. Collage print

M, J S is a reerence to the 1976 black comedy film Bill Cosby starred in. He plays a talent-ed antihero who drinks alcohol on duty as ambulance driver, harasses nuns, and behaves brazenly towardspractically everybody he meets. Te titles has connotations o drug use and sexually objectiying the emalebody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2NEGywTGF4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2NEGywTGF4


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Have an ultra white, ultra bright skin, 2015. Collage print

HAVE AN ULTRA WHITE, ULTRA BRIGHT SKIN is piece referencing the increased culture and use of skinwhitening in the black community. Many believe a fairer skin could be a chance to a better life. It

is quite popular in black West Indian nations like Jamaica. Where most ‘bleachers’ use over-the-counter creams, many of them knockoffs imported from West Africa. Long-term use of one of theingredients, hydroquinone, has long been linked to a disfiguring condition called ochronosis thatcauses a splotchy darkening of the skin.


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Screencaptures of photoshop


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The Difference in pain relievers, 2015. Collage print

D is a reerence to the apathy concerning alcholism in the black commu-nity. Historically, black culture condones heavy alcohol use or intoxication at any age. Alternately, the domi-

nant culture doesn’t view drinking as a young adult or moderate drinking as problematic as what is generallyound within the Arican American culture. Additionally, low income black men encounter a greater risk oralcohilism. Tis group also had less access to positive lie influences that would discourage drinking, suchas steady well-paying jobs, amily responsibilities and stable support systems. As a result, their partners andchildren ace the consequences.


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Ferguson, 2015. Collage print

FERGUSON is a piece refering to the ongoing series of protests that began after the fatal shootingof Michael Brown by a police officer in August 2014. The unrest sparked a vigorous debate in theUnited States about the relationship between law enforcement and African Americans, the militari-zation of the police.

The juxtaposition of Malcolm-X against a lone firefighter portrays the way in which civil rights lead-er fought against institutional racism in the 60s only for it to become rampant again in present day

society. Additionally the fixed gaze each subject has, reinforces the notion that the issue is out ofsight, yet not of mind. Therefore encouraging the viewer to join into the debate.


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PREPARING ARTWORK


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Degree show planning

By separating the two areas my practice was based on in my last year, I allowed the viewer to see the chrono-

logical order in my practice, my exploration rom my own identity to that o others through social issues.

I decided to rame the pieces on Identity in white finishes, as in my mind it retained an element o ‘pureness’.A culture, still not tainted and exploited by the outside world. On the contrary, pieces based on the them eothe ‘Spectacle’ were ramed in black.

Tis places the viewer at a crossword between, a diasporic exploration through my identity and documenta-tion o issues the black community ace, through the concept o the Spectacle.


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Documents

BA8 Documentation File