My Love Affair With A Fabric Sex Doll...

Yesterday morning i started my final piece. It was a toss up between a series of watercolour stills of porno movies and a 1:1 fabric replica of the sex doll made from discarded women's clothes. After asking my classmates which one they preferred (and considering what could be displayed in the central space at the exhibition, where under 18yr olds will be around), i went for the doll...

So this is it - the project (and the year) nearly over!!. I've still got a bit of sketchbook work to do, and i need to find an old T.V. stand, but i'm doing okay for time. I've already got the head, chest and one arm completed. and one leg and one arm is halfway done.

Sewing this doll together is strange. I'm being very careful, like after i finish it will be alive...

Update:

So we're nearly at the end of the project, and all is going well...
I'm finishing up my initial ideas, they're really varied, it's great. One idea i had was to create watercolour paintings of stills from porno movies. I really like this idea, it's number 1, closely followed by a sex doll made out of reclaimed fabric, scale 1:1.
 I created this a couple of days ago, from thin neon-style bendable tubing bought on Ebay. It was developed from a rough drawing of the love doll half deflated with its legs in the air. The process was inspired by the way Tracey Emin uses neon to draw with.

Here's a really bad video, from my mobile fone -  it should be rotated once clockwise - i cant work out how to do it :S...

The SCI-FI genre - dominated by men!

Turner Contemporary

  Just over one month old, the Turner Contemporary is the newest gallery in the UK. Last weekend i went there, to look at Revealed: Turner Contemporary Opens, the first show.
  The artists displayed all had one thing in common: the influences in their work could all be drawn back to Turner. The art as a whole, and the gallery, was brilliant, but three artists stood out for me, Daniel Buren, with Borrowing and Multiplying the Landscape, Work in Situ, Mirrors, Self-adhesive vinyl, Yellow filter, 2011

 This work made great use of what the area already had to offer - a fantastic clean new gallery, and of course a beautiful coastline.

 Next up was what i can only describe as the highlight of my year! Limit of Everything, 2011 by Conrad Shawcross. Constructed from metal, oak, lights and powered by a mechanical system, the work looks at science, geometry and music. This is a kinetic sculpture of a chord in music. I sat in the room for at least 45 minutes! Heres a video i took of it:

Lastly, we have Ellen Harvey's Arcadia, Mixed media, 2011. This piece looked very intimately at Brighton, where the new gallery is located. As well as a projection of the sea including sound, and 6ft letters spelling ARCADIA, a room was built within the room. This is the part i'm going to talk about. The room was not lit from above, or with spotlights, or in any other conventional way. Inside there were lots of (i didnt get the exact number - at least 20) clear persex sheets, backed with black, and etched into them were views of margate, put together to make a 360degree experience. It was quite breathtaking:

I learnt that, although you have a starting point, (and in this case six artists had the same starting points), the outcome can shoot off in an unexpected direction.

As well as attending a perspex engraving workshop, I bought the book - a bit pricey at £20 but i figure it'll be a kind of souvenir. I'm definitely going back to this gallery!

RASHBLOG 26/05: My legs are now painfully prickly, as is EVERYTHING downstairs. There are small red dots on my underarms now - not as many as the ones surrounding my privates.

METALWORK UPDATE!!:   IT FELL THROUGH!! I sent the artist a text message, being really nice,  but i didn't get a reply. I've adapted a screen print from the same idea, and during the holidays i'll be creating the 2 sculptures anyway, using glue and solder for the metal one.

RazorBurn Blues...(and reds,and tiny black lines)

 On Sunday I decided to go ahead with an idea I’d been weighing up for a few days. In order to reverse the roles of 'Macho hairy men' and 'Pretty hairless women’, and the abuse that comes with being the opposite, I shaved off all my body hair. This piece of performance art is accompanied by a spice jar containing the hair once attached to my body and a set of photographs of my hairless body.
 Part of the art is the reaction it evokes. My female feminist friends tell me that the response to them not shaving their body hair tends to be something along the lines of 'EWWWW THATS FUCKING DISGUSTING!!' As WE ALL know, body hair isn’t an unhygienic thing - it minimizes sweat and rash.
This successful piece of art is titled Hairiness is next to Furriness - an adapted quote from The Female Eunuch.


Hairiness if Furiness, Glass, Plastic, Human Hair



RASHBLOG day 1 (Sunday 22/05): Removing my hair with a disposable razor was unbelievably painful. Once finished, I noticed my increased perspiration, so I applied roll on deodorant - woops. It stung like hell!! Although the shave was close, it wasn’t close enough - I’m covered in spiky hairs (its especially painful downstairs...). I cut myself 13 times.
RASHBLOG day 2: When my legs experience too much friction the cuts open again.
RASHBLOG day 3: I'm noticing tiny red spots around the newly grown stubble around my pubis and the tops of my thighs. Some of them are filled with pus - I guess they're infected...
RASHBLOG day 4 (today - Wednesday 25/05): Moving today is painful-really painful. The hair is downstairs is a couple of millimetres long now. I've tried several creams and ointments, nothing helps. I anticipate at least a week of this pain...

Bell Hooks

I've found this - a quote by male feminist/anti-racist Bell Hooks...


"After hundreds of years of anti-racist struggle, more than ever before non-white people are currently calling attention to the primary role white people must play in anti-racist struggle. The same is true of the struggle to eradicate sexism—men have a primary role to play…in particular, men have a tremendous contribution to make…in the area of exposing, confronting, opposing, and transforming the sexism of their male peers."

Weld-Done!

So i wrote in my SOI that i'm going to try out 'steriotypical masculine and feminine practises' - sewing and welding. When i submitted my SOI i thought 'woops, might've shot myself in the foot - i dont have any access to this...'
I was having lunch with a few artists in Uxbridge and it turns out one of them knows an artist who has a studio in Finchley. He works with metal - BINGO!! I'm gonna fone him soon and arrange a meet. I'll let you know

In other news i'm on my way to the PayneShurvell gallery off Curtain Road to watch, then interview a pair of feminist performance artists, The Girls.

BTW

My background is a piece of art titled Untitled (The Days Of this Society Is Numbered) by Rirkrit Tiravanija, 2008

Super Misogyny Clouds

Went to barbican yesterday, to visit the Laurie Anderson, Gordon matta-Clark and Trisha Brown exhibition. It was full of very inspirational performance art.
While i was there though, i ventured into The Curve, an OxBow shaped room that stretches about 100metres and exhibits art free to the public. Beat The Champ by Cory Arcangel was there - a really cool display of bowling videogames all rigged at the controllers to throw gutterballs every time.
 I started researching Arcangel today, and started with a video of the work that made him "first come to prominance", Super Mario Clouds (2002-present). At the top of the comment list, under 'most liked' comments on Youtube, someone writes "Any work made by men can be considered as art". What the hell does this even mean?...

Besides, it's clever, but ultimately very boring....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkkJaqBbXV8

Do I need to give you evidence, really??!

This is just a quick reminder to all my friends who think women and men are equal nowedays. This made me nearly vomit.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007269,00.html

Lipstick and Blood

It's not much, but i've found a piece of feminist art created by a man. Cuban artist José Gómez Fresquet painted Lipstick and Blood around 1970. He is not what i'm looking for, a male artist whose sole ethos is feminism, but its a point in the right direction.

"Originally created as an antiwar statement in solidarity with Vietnamese women, the piece makes a connection between the objectification of women and the violence to which they are subjected. Issues of race and class also come into play as Fresquet juxtaposes the two women as worlds apart through their different features and shades of skin"


this was found on a website that i'll no doubt be using again, http://www.thedailyfemme.com/femme/tag/male-feminist-art/


Ciao!!

EUREKA!!! - My statement of intent and 'Question'

Ok, so i need to come up with a question for my FMP. This is the question i'll be spending the several weeks answering. I also need to write my statement of intent...

my question will most probably be: Does man and woman play the same role in feminism?..

I'll get back to you on the statement thing!

I found a hardcopy of this in a scrap paper bin at college...
Eureka! Magazine - The Science of Sexism - Exploring sexism in jobs in science
Unfortunately i cant post a link because i'd have to subscribe, and pay money just for the link!! but heres a pic of the cover...

GOT IT!!

I've decided on my FMP. The working title is this - 'Exploring Man's Role in Feminism'.

This is something i'm very passionate about, as a proud feminist. It's kind of a rhetorical/redundant experiment as i already know the answer - mans role is the same as women's (obviously). But thats cool.

 I chose it because of personal experience. The amount of my moronic male 'friends' who've verbally attacked me after i've defended women/feminism is crazy!!

I've already got a few books on the subject:

Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti, SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas, Girls To The Front by Sara Marcus and The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer.

Plus i'm thinking of looking at the Bechdel Test in movies and looking at feminist poetry (like Carol Ann Duffy)

YEAH!

FMP Theme - Hmmmm?...

Hi!!!

This blog's a kind of online diary that runs alongside my final major project.
I don't really know what to do my FMP on. I was thinking of the theme Aspiration?.. I mean, there's a lot i can do with that, but it might be too broad so i'd have to home in on something.. Or maybe Conflict... It's very relevant at them moment (kinda always is..) and it's pretty much limitless. My last idea was to chose a title that would require me to look at feminism - as it's something i believe quite strongly in...
I'll keep you posted!
Ciao!