MY GOLDEN LOCKDOWN – JOURNEY
ARTIST STATEMENT
Hi my name is Sophie, an aspiring British artist and currently a studying A Level art and design. I work in a variety of different mediums such as paint, Berol, watercolour, pencil, photography and video- which I’ve had the chance to experiment with more during this project especially photography and video, which I will continue to explore as it’s something different for me. When I create art it’s an escape from the real world, a chance to slow down from the fast moving pace of reality. I get joy from it, not only for myself, but for my audience who will hopefully enjoy my art as much as I did when making it. When I was introduced to the golden record I liked the idea of incorporating journey into my artwork as I can take it in many directions. Journey is quite a broad theme and so my artwork is rooted in narrative.
MOVING IMAGE
My moving image was inspired by artist Bill Viola – a contemporary video artist whose work is focused on the concept of fundamental human experiences, such as birth and death, which I’ve tried to show in the message of this moving image. My sister (who features in the video) is almost being reborn as she comes out of the water. I was also inspired by Douglas Gordon who is a Scottish contemporary artist. His piece called 24 Hour psycho, is an extremely slowed down version, lasting over 23 hours long, of the well known Alfred Hitchcock film, Psycho. As you can see in my moving image, the original video is slowed down from 7 seconds to 41 seconds.
Above are three installations done by Bill Viola: left – ‘Ascension’, centre – ‘Five Angels For The Millennium, Fire Angels’, right – ‘Five Angels For The Millennium, Departing Angel’
To achieve different lighting, in the style of Bill Viola, I used various colours screens. Blue and purple were used in the video above. I continually moved them, alternating in direction to pick up on different movements in the water and to alter the shadows and highlights in the bath and on her face.
In the slide show above, I have captured 6 images taken from the original slow-mo moving image. Each image shows a different stage of the video, capturing the movement of the water and her changing facial expressions when she falls back into the water.
I chose to use green lighting to create a different atmosphere within the video, personally I think using green lighting gives an eerie feel to it. However, the colour green is also thought to represent tranquillity, good luck and health, creating a calm mood. Each video I made is also in reverse, adding to the idea that she is being ‘reborn’ as she falls back into the water wet and comes out dry, as if her sins have been wiped away. I also altered the composition of the moving image, turning it upside down, in the style of Bill Viola who sometimes also flips his installations upside down. It is almost like they are entering an alternate universe, adding to the futuristic side of it and linking to my theme of art and science.
How I presented this project of moving image in my sketchbook
TEXT
When I was introduced to the project of text, I wanted to explore the idea of how we use activities like walking to go on a journey. When displaying my initial ideas I chose to use a concertina as not only is it a fun, interesting way to show my ideas, but also the way they are made – continuous folds, almost like your going on a journey when going through it.
Above are three pieces of artwork by Loui Jover : left – ‘A While Ago’, centre – ‘Tempest’, right – ‘Dystopia’
Below on the left, I picked a text piece and then highlighted certain words such as “existence…footing…meaning…life…” in the style of Loui Jover and his use of dripping watercolour. I chose to highlight these words because they link to journey and how we use walking to take a journey. I also highlighted words “written language…words…words in the dictionary” which link to my overall project of text and words.
Text piece inspired by Loui Jover 
Calligram inspired by walking artist Hamish Fulton and Simon Paterson
The calligram above on the right shows a silhouette of my friend walking and in the background the London underground tube map. This work was inspired by ‘walking artist’ Hamish Fulton – an English artist whose work is based on the experience of walks and also by Simon Patterson, particularly the art piece named ‘The Great Bear’ which depicts the London tube map. Patterson is also an English artist whose work is much more scientific and he too uses text in his work. In ‘The Great Bear’ he replaced the names of the tube stations with engineers, philosophers, explorers, planets, journalists, footballers, musicians, film actors, saints, Italian artists, sinologues (Chinese scholars), comedians and ‘Louis’ (French kings), which I find interesting as it’s more personal, and almost pays homage to those mentioned. The word I chose to use in my calligram is ‘Journey’ to communicate that walking can be used to take a journey both physically and mentally within your own head, as it can be used as a time to think.
Below, you can see how I displayed my work on the project of text in my sketchbook.
Sound
For the project of Sound I wanted to capture a morning in lockdown. In the recording below I have included sounds of what I would hear in the morning. I wanted to draw attention to sound that we normally ignore. Some sounds I included were: switching a light switch on, walking, buttering toast, cutting bread, getting cutlery out, stirring a cup of tea, boiling the kettle, putting ice in a glass of water.
All the sounds I included were also in chronological order. I did this because I found it important as I wanted to capture the morning in order and if not, it would confuse the listener.
Above are some images I included in my brainstorm when I was first given this project.
Thank you for viewing my page. In my future artworks I will be explore moving image and video in more detail as I really enjoyed working with it within this project.
Golden Lockdown 