Self Appraisal...

Birmingham Institute of Art and Design
School of Art
BA(Hons) Fine Art Level 5
Module: Individual Practice 2: Review and Orientation

Orientation: Outline the imaginative explorations and technical and practical developments in your work in this module. Has the context changed or developed?

• Start point = without making a literal self-portrait I wanted to explore my own existence.
• Used a new practice, film. Was meant to be a recording of time and of a part of my life, but some thought it was surveillance. This was emphasized in the display of the film.
• Series of images of the living room, bedroom and building work showed the development of time and someone living in that space.
• Drawings of the same spaces above to show my own viewpoint and emotions perhaps to that space.
• The variation of these drawings meant some encourage me to look at Michael Craig-Martin and his relation to stain glass windows.

Appraisal: Review and analyse these advances. How have these informed and developed the content and meaning of your work?

• Although starting with and concentrating on human existence the documentation of film and the series of photographs of the living/bed room with the screen shots of the building work meant that I focused on the recording of human movement.
• Not focusing on the figure meant that the absence of figure yet presence of the person being there was the most appealing factor of the work.
• Display of the film having such an effect on its meaning was interesting if wanting to change its meaning, but has made me decide that for its purpose as a tool to draw attention to something normally ignore is most effective when shown singularly as one film, in silence and displayed on a simple screen so the focus is on the film alone.
• Hand drawings of everyday scenarios made those ‘mundane’ things special by highlighting them
• Consideration of how else to display this style of images (after focusing on the style of Michael Craig-Martin) led to the display of the images I create on larger scales, framed to look like stain glass windows, actually creating my own stain glass window, and suggesting the idea of having the image outside through the use of Photoshop.
• Although the sketches and Michael Craig-Martin inspired works had the desired effect a lot more needed to be produced to have more successful images to work with, something to consider later.
• Realisation of this was when seeing the same image being used and the same environment; however this was needed for the image produced. In future a need to look a site specific art is necessary.

List of skills acquired / developed: in relation to the module learning outcomes, identify the acquisition of particular practical, technical and intellectual skills.

• Film (basic editing and making into a film).
• Photoshop as a painting tool rather than just a photo editing program.
• Analysing film.
• Consideration of the presentation of film and larger pieces.
• Consideration of the environment that the work is displayed in and how that effects the work.
• To have confidence in my own ideas and thought process so that more work can be produced.