personification of the body

I just wrote this as a reply to a friends post on Facebook.

Am I object or subject?

Bharat, the eye is getting better but finds itself tired and a little flickery - a little like the brain after surgery but smaller and thus different in intensity. i find it strange to contemplate the notion of a plastic lens where once was flesh and consider how the muscles must feels gripping this new but soon to be intimate stranger. Similar to artery navigating the clips that sealed off the site of danger.

There's more to this but i will need to write it tomorrow

 

 

 feeling poutie!

I came into my work room this morning and saw that no one had read my blog. I was poutie - its odd but its true - I had expected audience and there wasnt!

Ive been thinking about this reaction. in a way I feel very Victorian - the 'gentle reader' kind of thing. But when I think about it - and its difficult to articulate - I create my own sense of audience in my own head and so this 'audience' exists on several planes


1. my imaginary day dream of audience
2. my own reaction to my work and my thoughts
3. comments left here by other people

so 3. is only a part of my construct of audience.

To change the subject Ive started reading Robert Graves' The White Goddess and the catalogue of the Travelling Eqyptian Exhibition organised by the AFA in 2001.
Something that caught my eye - private statues often copied the statues of the reigning king but that his statues were not lifelike but used symbolic features to make him godlike in his image.

In a weird way it reminded me of having my photograph taken with an actor portraying an actor portraying a fictional charcter at movie world.

I love it!!!!

I love new books!

I bought the copy of Egyptian art Ive been looking at for some time. In reality its a catalogue of the work held in the British museum but its lush and beautiful and I wanted it!

I also bought a copy of Graves' The white Goddess because it talks to the work Im making at the moment. And I found Rappaport's Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity.

Then in a fit of the greedies I bought Tomasz Stanko's CD selected recordings.

So now I'm drinking a glass of very ordinary champagne with a flower floating in it and playing here. Im loving this!

I went and found a song by Anthony and the Johnsons to play here and found one.
I love his work with a passion - it makes an ache in the middle of me and allows me to experience psychic pain without destruction - for this I give thanks.

I'm going to upload more of my work and my artists statement

 

 

Artist Statement

I am a collage artist. I explore the concept of the sign using the idea of the female and found materials.

The common need to find the human form intrigues me. Irrespective of the disparate nature of the materials available we have a desire to construct the human form. In my work I wish to push this thought: how abstract must the form become before we no longer find the human within it?

Landscape fascinates me; the sensual relationship between land and sky; horizon as form seeking line; both speak to the mythic structures of earth mother and sky father.
Two pathways beckon; the pieta and the landscape as female.

I am not sure if the females I create are icons or if they are fetishes.

mining past posts

its was almost warm, the sky a blue with promise and the trees were covered with the faintest trace of green.

I wanted it to be an haiku - and I hope that it will be.

the haiku I caught was a much darker butterfly.

thank you to haiku thief for raising the idea of alternate realities

******phone, cock both hands full
talk, love, of a distant world
don't wake the sleeper

Unpacking the old blog

Im going through my old myspace blog and transcribing entrues here because i want to keep this blog and keep it finctional. 

So Im reading old posts, old observations and old poems and loving the fragments of eloquence I find in my work. Such a narcissist I am but there it is.

There is great pleasure in reading through old thoughts, great panic at seeing old difficulties still unresolved but delight in the patterning of a self given back to itself!

The delight of language!

I've just got back from a walk down to the local vet. My cat, Boomps brought in another possum baby last night to play with and so I took it to the vet to be sent to the wildlife recovery place.

This bites hard as a New Zealander! In New Zealand possums are vermin and great efforts are taken to remove them from the bush environment they are destroying. Here they are precious little things to be saved and nurtured - as I said it bites hard!

Anyway, Boomps has a habit of bringing in babies to play with. Big ones he kills and devours - he's a cat, its nature and whilst I don't particularly like cleaning up after him I appreciate the ones he leaves unpacked beside my bed as a late night snack - THAT is an expression of love!

I saw a house on the way there that looked uninhabited and was eagerly determined to check it out on my way back. However, on my return the gate was closed and fastened so I expect it has inhabitants of the legitimate kind.

Typing that makes me wonder about the concept of legitimate occupation and just exactly what makes some occupations illegitimate - but that's another blog!

Another aside, the first house I went and photographed now has had its lawns mowed and a temporary fence erected around the pool. it seems the caretaker who wrote the note to the squatter  has arrived. I went in to say hello but the house was as open and deserted as before. Robert and I are going down on Thursday to retrieve some rose bushes and azaleas before such retrieval work becomes impossible and the whole garden is bulldozed away.

And now to the point of this blog!

I'm fascinated by the English language, the preciseness and magpie qualities of a language which has historically taken and used words from everywhere in the quest for that degree of precision.

I often think about the subtle differences in words when I'm walking  - picture images that illustrate them and strive to delineate exact differences between words that seem very similar.

Three of my favorites are glint, glimmer and glisten. I can spend a whole hour's walking thinking about how different these three words are in their essence and I can do it over and over without becoming bored of it!!

Today I also thought of two more that intrigue me - the differences between lucky and fortuitous. Not words that look or sound similar but curious making nevertheless!!

work for next year - but not NYRs

here are three things I want to concentrate on next year.
Firstly I want to finish my phd. I have 20K words left to write and they are mainly the theoretical links between the ethnographic section.


I want to have another exhibition later in the year. The work I am developing is an extension of the  fetishes I started last year but  want to develop the narrative aspects of the work.
and I'm looking forward to presenting a garment at the wearable art exhibition lee is starting

http://www.manneqart.com/

I'm going to add a gallery for my collages and books

I'm beginning to feel I can do these things!!

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thinking about bodies

I don't believe it is possible to be female in this modern western urban world we live in and not have a skewed vision of your own body - your own presence in the world.

Since the female body  became part of the sign system by which an androcentric culture tries to construct meaning in the world our bodies have been up for grabs!

The curve of our stomachs,  the curve of our ankles and feet, the curve where our backs meet our buttocks all have added, and often social, meaning.

I watch music videos - I always have. I have always enjoyed the window into popular culture they provide with their visual imagery and - I like music!

But I am not  enjoying the music videos so very much now. The portrayal of my sex as prostitutes and sex slaves suggests to me the sign system our bodies is reiterating  that something has gone terribly wrong in our culture.

Im curious also that a cut face is becoming normative. the reshaping  of the female face has become something women are supposed to accept as normal and to aspire to.

Some cosmetic surgeons work is so particular it can be visibly recognised.
On a symbolic level post modern culture has become an angry/sad adolescent cutting herself to create some kind of feeling, some kind of sensation - not understanding that what she feels is as unreal as everything she sees.