Evaluation

PHVP 3409 Evaluation

The brief was to create a Final Major Project, demonstrating the ability to develop and sustain a focused, in-depth, body of practical, creative work around one theme. My own approach to photography is art-based. My work tends not to follow narrative or non-fictional themes; rather, I work within an art context.

It was an essay I had written last year, based on Surrealism, which had inspired the beginning to this project. Surrealism is such an open form of expression, for reasons simply that you cannot argue (although many do) with what another’s subconscious may be emoting. In short, the aim for many surrealists was to expose psychological truth by freeing thought from conscious reasoning.  It is most definitely a demanding approach, dealing with such a free system of thinking – to attempt to understand and reason with such a format that represses reason to begin with.

With this, my basic needs were to create images out of obscurity, for reasons only instinct knew, and then study the outcome afterwards – a shoot now, think later, approach. Beginning research/inspiration was drawn from Rene Magritte and Max Ernst. Ernst relied much on spontaneity and juxtapositions of materials and imagery, whilst Magritte’s work had simplicity to it (although this is misleading). He also often chose ordinary themes to construct his work from – trees, chairs, shoes, doors, landscapes – he wanted his work to stem from the visible world, rather than dreams or strange phenomena.

The processes of experimentation with different ideas all stemmed from the same approach throughout the project - juxtaposition of objects/scenarios with setting. I wanted to avoid previous themes of surrealism, such as the recreation of dreams or dreamlike worlds – rather I wished to keep a slight surreal leitmotif, to maintain some obscure icing on the cake. Eventually my project honed in on the photographing of a red shelf within a variety of environments, to become a part of a growing series. The main philosophy of the series is transformation, of an objects use and placement. Through the simple action of changing the habitat of a form, it manipulates not only the function of the object, but also the function of the new setting. The result is that the setting now becomes a plinth, the object is the art-piece and the act of purposeful placement takes on a sculptural convention. The surreal leitmotif is driven from the series’ purpose to challenge convention and rational function (rational thought). It is my response to rationalism, rebelling with an irrational image.

But why misplace an object, purposely? My own interpretations for doing so are, on the surface, simple. Purely “just because”? Perhaps. I had initially envisioned some imagined blur of bizarreness – a simple image, uncomplicated but unexplained – stemming from my own subconscious. However, the images are not confined to only my own interpretation, for how can an image, with such a lack of narrative, leave the same message to another?  I prefer to keep an open approach to expressive work, avoiding creating work for a specified declarative reason - for I believe that within art, greatness equates with multivalence.

To present this series of images, it would best suit book publication, alongside an opening gallery exhibition. The series has potential to keep on growing over time, to create a larger series would take time but is entirely possible to keep on taking the red shelf to different locations, as opportunities appear.  

I believe I have successfully fulfilled the brief, generating a multitude of different experiments whilst maintaining focus throughout the project on an expressive approach to surreal imagery – resulting in an effective (ever-growing) series of images that work well individually, as well as together. I am whole-heartedly pleased with the resulting images and would, currently, change little to my working process for an expressive project sticking to an art-context. I feel the “shoot now, think later” approach very much compliments an expressive form of thinking – for true expression is often of-the-moment, for us to improve and dig deeper into afterwards.