Inspiration of the Week - Cathy Wilkes

In Cathy Wilkes she creates installations using found objects and also includes some of her own paintings. 

I really like Wilkes work as I think that her pieces create an interesting - and to me quite eerie, unsettling and sinister - atmosphere. Placing these human like figures amongst these objects creates a whole situation and scenario within the space these objects occupy.

What I like most about this work is that the viewer is allowed to impose their own story onto the installation and create a sort of dialogue between the "characters".

Part of what I think makes this piece interesting in particular is the use of the hanging sheets. These are reminiscent of an washing line giving the sense of home life an comfort. The patterns on these sheets also remind me of wallpaper furthering this feeling. 

However even though they give a sense of comfort and protection, it also acts as a barrier, blocking the audience's view on the installation. They seem to be trying to hide what is happening behind them, with what is going on behind them appearing to be somewhat dark and potentially depressing. 

In my work I have used found objects to tell some sort of story or dialogue behind the objects, however I have never really used them to tell a whole separate story. 

In all I like these installations and I like the artists ability to tell a story but not reveal all to the audience but allow them to make it up for themselves with the objects presented.

NB - all photographs here have been taken from this site:

https://www.themoderninstitute.com/artists/cathy-wilkes

I do not own any of the pictures on this post.

Photos from walks

For my exhibition i created a photobook made up of photos from my walks

Here is a link to my flickr album so you can view the photos :)

https://flic.kr/s/aHskB4KXn7

Catalogue Book

So as a part of my exhibition I created a catalogue of all my found objects for people to look through.

Here is a link to my Flickr album for you to look through :)

https://flic.kr/s/aHskDZyUrW

The Final Exhibition

I'm now going to update on how my degree show exhibition went (finally).

Well first things first I was super happy with how it turned out, I put a lot of work into planning what I would do then tidying the state that the store cupboard was in, which was soon to be my exhibition space. It was really great to see all that work, stress and pain materialise into something that I could really be proud of and was more than I had planned it to be.

So what was my exhibition? 

For my walks I had decided to go with my marks swap idea and then put the objects I had collected on display which would be the bulk of my exhibition piece. I documented this process through photography which was then displayed in a photobook. Another book I had on display was a catalogue of every object I had collected for the project, including objects from my investigatory and test walks which were stored in a filing cabinet that people could look through also. 

Also on display were all my sketchbooks that I had used for the projects, my laptop showing the photos I had take and videos I had shot, and I also collected smaller things to put into test tubes and petri-dishes to show elements of the environment which the objects were taken from.

I displayed the routes I had taken for my main swap series by pinning embroidery thread onto corkboards in different colours to give the space more movement and add something else for the audience to look at. I also used this to give the piece more of a feel that this project was an investigation.

Using the windows as a whiteboard, I also drew on some of my routes and illustrated where I found some of the items and other important parts of the landscape.

The audience were also able to view large prints from some of my walks on the wall and also smaller photos on display on the shelf in the cupboard. 

Here's a link to the flickr album in which all photos from this exhibition can be found :)

https://flic.kr/s/aHskB47Ah5

I couldn't be happier with how my degree show went and my grade also reflected the work that I had put into this project. I hope to continue with this theme next year for my honours project and I hope next year is just as successful, 

so until next time,

byyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeee

Róisín -x