It's been a while...

It has been quite a while since I have posted on here so I have decided to catch you all up on exactly what I have been up to with my work and hectic schedule.
It has been a busy few months with my Solo Exhibition at the orchard centre and my January assessment.
The last two months have been very busy and my practice has developed massively.
Last time I made a post about my work, I was very stumped as to which direction to move in with my practice...I had a few ideas bouncing around but I could not seem to concentrate on one.

This was when I decided that it would be best to just crack on with my work and start playing around with the ideas in my head.

My Sketchbook is very important to my work as I believe that the documentation is a fantastic way of ensuring all of my ideas have some form of basis to them. My large sketchbook is where all of my brainstorms are kept, all my ideas, thoughts, progress of my work.

I also look at a fair few artists throughout my sketchbook, one certain artist in particular being of great interest...John Stezaker.

I personally interpreted Stezaker's work to include absence as a possible theme. The way parts of the images are missing and replaced with something else instantly makes me think of a 'lack'. Stezaker's work intrigued me, I found each individual image so powerful yet so simple. Using found images he collaged into them with landscapes or other portraits, the way that the collage hides certain bits of the images creates an instant lack, to me creating an air of absence. What do you see behind the collage? It seems to hide part of the personality, its slightly mysterious. I love his work and I definitely plan on using his work as a main influence in my practice.

Alongside my artist research, I also had a photography workshop that I attended and used to develop my work. I attended the Black and White Chemical Photography workshop, learning how to process negatives and to develop my prints. I absolutely loved attending this workshop as I learnt a lot of skills which I will carry with me for life.

Some of the images which I managed to take (I'd never used a film camera before) came out exactly how I wanted them to. I took a trip to the general cemetery to photograph the epitome of absence - death. In my head, a person being removed from your life or removed from the world is an absence, this is why I believed photographing in the cemetery was the perfect idea.

 The image above shows three of the photographs which I took on my black and white film, these were the three which I thought came out the best from my 36 roll. I loved the way the three worked individually and as a group.
I printed each of the images myself in the dark room, the process itself put me out of my comfort zone, I have never done anything like this before so doing it made me feel very distant from my normal practice.

Once I had developed my images, I decided that I wanted them to be the main piece of work for my solo exhibition as I felt very proud of what I had done...