I'm Back! Jack & Dinos Chapman - Doll Obsession

Yes after my break I am back!  Technically I have been back a week however I have not yet had a moment to write this.  I discussed in my previous post-Jack and Dinos Chapman briefly so I wanted to go into more detail here - as my work is definitely going to be using the doll that I posted. 

Jack & Dinos Chapman by Rachel King (2018) Source: Blain Southern

Jack and Dinos Chapman use many dolls, dummies, models and mannequins in their work -these all create the disturbing nature of their work as these dolls all look so human yet are not human - why does a child love a doll because it is like a human companion it has eyes that look  back at you and although the flesh maybe plastic it represents us/you. This work below Forehead (1997)  is a disturbing idea of a woman with four heads and a play on the word 'forehead'  There is a humour to all of the Chapmans work. Kupper writes in his article on The Chapmans; 'The Chapman brothers create works that are artifacts of this existential catastrophe of our own making. But what people most misunderstand about the Chapman brothers is that their work is hilarious – a laugh riot, an obscene and brilliant joke. If you don’t laugh, you are missing the point all together.' (Kupper 2017)

Artist: Jake and Dinos Chapman (British) Title: Forehead , 1997 Medium: fibreglass, resin, pigment, wigs and training shoes

Looking at the work of The Chapmans is supposed to be challenging and what is clear that what they create is created out of our world which is chaotic, disturbing, and at times hateful, sickening and funny.  The Sum of All Evil encompasses all these ideas and by looking at this work there is a monumental quality to it and as I consider this in relation to my own work I do think my army of dolls now have more direction - there is much more I can achieve by using them - I like the repetition of them, their face over and over again in a landscape, maybe they can talk to God, or have a spiritual revelation or maybe it will be a digital breakdown - I can't wait to see how my army develops! Just as below the feet of God stand above the destruction and He is destroyed in this nightmare vision!

Holy war … detail from the Chapman brothers’ The Sum of All Evil – part of In The Realm of the Unmentionable at the Jerwood Gallery, Hastings. Photograph: Felix Clay

References

Kupper, Oliver Maxwell (30th January 2017) Autre, Brothers Grim:An Interview of Dinos Chapman on the power of Humour and Violence [Online] Available from: https://autre.love/interviewsmain/2017/1/30/brothers-grim-an-interview-of-dinos-chapman (Accessed 04/0819)

Jones. J (24th October 2014) The Guardian,Jake and Dinos Chapman review – a hilarious, horrifying orgy of darkness [Online] Available From;  https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/24/jake-dinos-chapman-review-hastings-jerwood-gallery-realm-unmentionable (Accessed 04/08/19)

Development of Ideas: The Doll's Head

After considering the ideas that I created in the last post I started to look at how to develop these.  I looked at different ways I might transform a doll I thought perhaps I could make it older, stranger but I was not happy with how these turned out.

I went back to looking at the patterns and the forms of the dolls and started to experiment with these;

This dolls head really struck me - it sort of reminded myself of me and so in my own images I started to see what could be done with her - I found some bodies and began working...

I liked these armies of dolls and their patterns - I may order these online to physcially created something with them or I might start to develop this further - whether this becomes an art installation or photoshop/digital design I am not sure of yet.

Still considering the possibilities...

Object Lesson

The object of the object lesson is to pick an object and think of ideas that can be drawn from this for a project.  Here I placed all my ideas on a Milanote board:

To view this board in a larger view please click here. On this board, I explored the ideas from the starting point of a artists mannequin and I looked at; Bernard Faucon, Hans Bellmer and The Chapman Brothers as these artists all use dolls and mannequins to disrupt, disturb and question.

Project Ideas that have come from this are: 

1.  A photographic project that uses mannequins as the artists do here to wake the viewer 

2.  A digital photographic project that will manipulate images to create a new form of life in a series/collection something future human.

3. Use the body parts to create a sculpture, embed the sculpture with eyes/cameras that will watch the viewer watching the sculpture. 

In my next post, I will choose one of these ideas to explore over the next week to see if this will work as a project throughout the term...

Welcome to Summer Term Two!

Welcome to a new term and a new project.  This term looking forward to the summer sun, taking more pictures and really getting excited about making a new project.

So to start the term I was looking through the images in George Bataille's book The Tears of Eros and this one I very much enjoyed.  Mainly as I didn't know much about Labisse and therefore I thought I would start with him this term.  

Félix Labisse (March 9, 1905 – January 27, 1982) was a French Surrealist painter, illustrator, and designer.  Labisse designed sets and costumes for many theatre productions in his lifetime including; "The Martyrdom of San Sebastián" by Gabriele d'Annunzio and Claude Debussy at the Théâtre National de l'Opéra, "Paris - Magic" by Lise Deharme and Germaine Tailleferre at the Opéra-Comique and Partage de Midi" by Paul Claudel directed by Jean-Louis Barrault.

His painting however are what I am interested in here - Poetic morning has an array of artists and writers who sit together with two women both of which have become objects, mannequins.  Apollinaire holds the model standing around the waist as you might a shop dummy and the other woman lays prostrate in the chair with a head painted like a Picasso.  The scene is cold as there is no connection through eye contact of any of the participants in the image.  they star into space almost in jest of the painting itself, they knowingly cannot sit in a room together and they have been posed and dressed just like the women in the scene.  This alien scene with its unwilling participants becomes more interesting as it disturbs the normal sense of the portrait where elements bring the sitters together - here they are intentionally separated and individualised.  

This disturbance interests me....

References

Felix Labisse Official Website [Online] Available from: http://www.felixlabisse.com (Accessed 30/06/19)

Bataille G. (1989) The Tears of Eros, City Lights Books, San Francisco

Finally Zoetic Mindfulness is Born!

A last my website is now completely functional and although still some tweaks are needed I have completed the site with fully functional links to the two online shops that I am selling from and with a blog that I have started. 

zoeticmindfulness

As you can see here I have updated the front page and I think this is much improved - all the navigation works well and I have added a lightbox that pops up for people to subscribe which includes acceptance to the privacy policy. 

The about page looks good and I have tested it on the mobile view - as below: 

The shop fronts I had to create two as I ended up using two different sites due to the range of goods and how I could upload my designs differently in both.  Redbubble offered the widest range and I could use my own designs easier here so I created this as the Zoetic store

As you can see you can buy t-shirts, bedding, a range of products that showcase the design and give a wide choice to to the viewer.

I also have created a blog which I really want to continue to add to regularly as useful informative tool for the audience..

Although still much work is needed here I am pleased with the results and that I have completed this on the deadline!

Finalising the Site: Reimagining

The first design I created did not work as I had hoped and didn't look how I wanted it to.  Mainly it lacked consistency and the navigation did not please me as it seemed clunky and quie difficult.  I therefore started the site again using a different template that suited the theme much better.  Here are the updated screenshots...

This is my new logo I used a photograph from pixabay of the butterfly and then selected this on Photoshop and cut it out to place it on a transparent background - this was so that I could add it to any background without it looking odd.  I then changed the saturation using the adjustment layers to this grey as my whole site uses a grey and white colour palette for the design.

 I then recreated the homepage - I used the original image but softened the shades and tones to create a softer more mindful look.  I added the logo and created very simple navigation that was much cleaner and easier to use.

Although in this image teh shopping cart is still there I actually removed the embedded shop and will add this again when I have created the books that I would like to sell directly from here.  The shop here uses another site for fulfillment so I just added the widget as in my previous post.

I rewrote the About page and changed the image again using the shades of grey and white and this is much improved and more consistent.

I also changed the about page using the same technique and although I have not screenshotted it here I added a lightbox to ask people o subscribe and to agree to the privacy policy which pops up.  This still needs more work as I need to add the welcome letter that goes out automatically on sign up.

I then changed and edited the mobile view and this seems to be working well but I do need to do more UX testing on this to ensure that it does work as it should on all devices.

I have now made my site live although I would suggest it is still in the Beta stage but it is getting there and with a little more work could be great!

Next steps are social media, creating sales and reaching out to people through the site.

Finalising My Site: Making the Shop

I have spent the last two weeks trying to add ecommerce elements to my site - I wanted to use Redbubble however after two weeks of not getting any response after they deactivated my account I gave up and tried various other sites that could fulfil orders for clothing, mugs etc.  I managed finally to use (mostly) successfully Sundog.  This is my page on Sundog: Sunfrog.com/Zoeticmaster

The pages look like this:

I was quite pleased with these and only went with text designs to begin with although I have made graphic designs but the uploading of these has proved a little problematic so I will keep working on this.

This links to my site through a widget and again despite best efforts the widget was not keeping the link correctly to my products so I have had to contact support to fix this however I have at least now got a shop!