I translated three images from one medium (internet pictures) to another (painting). By transferring their imagery onto canvas I removed them from their original context and also de-personalised the imagery so that the paintings return to being viewed as objects.
The capability of the physical materials used combines with the paintings, to create a different level of space and forms a new language of meaning for the images.
This results in opening up a new communication to expend the ways of our seeing, generating questions that associate modern society with the materialist culture, within which we are all living.
The first painting titled ‘Ga Ga’ was based on imagery of the pop star ‘Lady Gaga’ and was chosen from the thousands of her images discovered during my internet research.
Her eyes are staring at the viewers but like most icons in the celebrity world a distance has been created between the celebrities themselves and the viewers.
It suggests that the celebrity is obsessed with their own world and the viewers look at them but never can see the world those celebrities live in, only the distance from their eyes.
Her face acts like a mask; with layers of make up, bringing up questions about do you really know who she is ? Is the make up just acting like a mask to protect her by hiding the nature of herself ?
The plastic wrapping material is casually put across her face and envelopes her head to signify her hair, it is suggesting the recycling of the fashion trend, that the image of the celebrity is never new and this similarity of images travelling and recycling through time and the world.
The second images is ‘Alexander McQueen’, his eyes are passionately looking at the viewers, the flash light reflection on both his eyes reveal the constant professional exposure in front of the camera which his celebrity status ensued.
The see-through black fabric material placed on McQueen’s painting, is acting like an agency for his own inner self; a material that he so often used to cover up the heads of his models or their whole bodies in his fashion shows.
It is a sense of his own unique style, an interpretation to deprive the human senses and also hints at the echo of his own hidden world through his fashion talent, using it to perform as a form of protection for his own privacy in matters such as personal emotion.
The material is both an indication of Alexander McQueen’s style and a veil of mourning for the loss to the British fashion industry.
The third painting is titled ‘The process of a celebrity’.
The processes transform an unknown person into a celebrity.
The whole painting is covered up in recycled wrapping material and cotton cloth; only revealing a line of exposure in the face of the painting.
The portrait itself is fully painted just like the other two paintings but material prevents the entire painting from being seen.
It calls into question our understanding of :
What are we looking for as celebrity ?
What do you want to see in a celebrity ?
What a celebrity means to you today ?
Private view at Art University Bournemouth 23 June 2011
Free Range in London Brink Lane Exhibition 07 July 2011
http://www.free-range.org.uk/cgi-bin/portfolio.pl?yearID=16&exhibitionID=696&memberID=19141
