Collecting Bones..

After my chats with Ang about the small skulls I had to cast I decided to try and cast things that were less precious to me. I didn't want the skulls to break as they are very delicate. I decided to take a look around for bones that would be stronger and easier to find.

My first point of call was to go to a local butchers, they had a range of different bones from different types of animals that are used for meat. The bones that I got belonged to a pig.

Skeleton of a pig:





The Butchers were kind enough to give me a scapula bone (the shoulder blade) and two costal cartilage bones. These bones were still covered in fat and some muscle tissue from where the meat had been removed from the bones. I looked up techniques for cleaning bones. There were many different techniques for cleaning the bones, from a burying technique in which you buried the bones to leave the flesh to rot naturally and then dug up the bones after a period later, to a bleaching technique. I have previously used the bleaching technique on my skulls to get rid of excess flesh, and in the circumstances of time and having no garden to bury bones in I thought this would be the best technique to do with these bones.


Article on cleaning bones I looked at:

http://www.jakes-bones.com/p/how-to-clean-animal-bones.html

Louise Bourgeois

Pink Days and Blue Days
Louise Bourgeois piece Pink Days and Blue Days is made from found objects that hang from a ten-foot-tall steel armature. The piece features a collection of items of clothing and other pieces that are hanging from the bones of dead animals. Every piece that hangs on the steel is said to of had a different meaning to Bourgeois, some items of clothing being saved from her childhood. Included in the objects is a silk coat from her childhood embroidered with nicknames that she was given as a child. Included amongst the clothing also hangs a silk handkerchief and an empty perfume bottle.






The piece has a strong feminine feel to it. With the use of silk materials coloured in white, pale blue and baby pink. The objects hang in a very delicate way, they look to be almost flowing in the ways in which they hang. These items of clothing are strongly contrasted by the use of animal bones. Bones are a representation of death. Once a person dies their bones no longer have a use for clothes. These items are a representation of Bourgeois' childhood. By the mixing of this clothing with dead animal bones perhaps she is suggesting a link between the death of her childhood. These items of clothing also contrast highly with the steel armature that they have been hung onto. The armature appears ugly and building trade like amongst the silk clothing. It is a reminder of cheap modern clothing rails that are often seen hanging displays in cheaply manufactured clothing stores. Again very different to the beautiful clothing items seen hanging here.

The Chapman Brothers- Mannequins

The Chapman Brothers are English visual artists who work as a sibling duo to create works. They have a reputation for presenting grotesque and visually shocking works, often viewed as inapporpriate and pornographic.
Their trademark mannequins of children morphed together are some of their most controversial and well known works. The mannequins feature children stuck together, often missing body parts such as arms and legs. Some children are also flipped upside down and stuck to others on their head, or alternatively one body is presented with two heads coming off it.
One particular set of The Chapman Brothers mannequins are very controversial. Where the original facial body parts such as noses and mouths would usually be have been replaced with adult genetalia. Some of the child mannequins are facing others looking puzzled by the replacement facial parts on the other children. For the society we live in children that look to be this young (around 6 or 7) would not usually have seen fully grown adult genetalia. This type of thing is not presented or shown to children of this age. Due to society we automatically use this link of adult genetalia and children to being something inappropriate and criminal. It is strongly linked to cases of abuse and phedophilia.

 

 

 

Another set of The Chapman Brothers mannequins however are what attracted me to study further into the artists. In this set of mannequins the childrens facial parts have again been replaced, this time with body parts of animals. These children insead stand alone and are not morphed together, all wearing black tracksuits and trainers. These mannequins belonged to the exhibition based on Hitler germany and the Nazi's. All of the children wear the Nazi badge on their tracksuit. When looking at these mannequins I automatically related the english youth culture of chavs (the tracksuits and cheap trainers) and Hitler's Nazi youth army (Nazi Badge). It is almost as if The Chapman brothers are implying the Chavvy youth of England are as bad as the Nazi Youth. A very bold and controversial statement.

 

The childrens facial parts have been swapped with those of unattractive and quite scary animal body parts. The Chapman Brothers have clearly tried to chose animal body parts that provide a grotesque look when placed onto a human. The parts include pig snouts, elephant trunks, and dogs snarling jaws. They have been chosen to make the children look disgusting, for example cute little whiskers and cat ears could have placed on the children but it would have a totally opposite effect. The childrens positions themselves do not imply that they have taken on the animalistic qualities of the animal parts that are on them. Instead the animal parts serve a purpose of providing a message of the childrens personalities relating to the animal and the current and historical situation.

 

 



Annalising my behaviour in a 'pack'

Through looking at modern examples of how humans can take on animalistic qualities through 'pack' like structures I became interested in how I behave. When I put thought into it I behave in a very different way with my friends that how I would act in a situation with other groups of people such as tutors, parents, and even siblings. Particularly when going out and when alcohol is involved my own pack like structure evolves within my friendship group.

You go out as a group, you stick together as a group. If one of the group goes missing you do everything in your will power to find where they have gone to, essentially 'hunting them down'. My own personal behaviour changes considerably when with my friends. I become very different to how I would be on my own. There is a sense of reliance within the group that you will all equal protect each other from harm, a bond as such. When another who doesn't belong to your 'pack' tries to unwantedly intrude the bond becomes apparent. Whether your 'pack' consists of males and females or just females or just males will vary how the 'pack' will react.

I would describe the group of friends I go out with as a 'female pack'. We mainly consist of just females (occasionally having the odd boyfriend dragged out with us). We stick together as a group, and are very protective of each other from people that don't 'belong' with us. If someone (especially strange males) approaches one member of the 'pack' and give the member unwanted attention the other members will do their best to get rid of the intruder. The 'pack' becomes a protective boundary for anybody that doesn't belong.

However, this 'pack' situation also becomes clear when other females become trouble to members. Some females from other 'packs' can occasionally cause problems to members, often fights are started and caused from different 'pack' members that do not see eye to eye. The 'pack' will often become involved with its individual members fights, again reinforcing the sense of trust amongst the 'pack'.

Through analysing my own group of friends and how we behave I can begin to believe that humans can clearly show animalistic traits. It is usually more apparent after the use of a substance such as alcohol that can relax the human traits, and cause us to forget how we are taught to act as humans.

There is a clear safety in being part of a 'pack'. It is hard to gain entry to a pack, and also hard to take out a 'pack' member when they have others looking out for them.


Examples of 'pack's' I belong to:


Home 'Pack'

University 'Pack'

Studio Work Research Influences- Modern popular culture can display animalistic characteristics

Mean Girls

• Demonstration of how humans display pack like animal qualities when together
• Specific girls group together to 'prey' on other groups
• Pack leaders in this aspect are the popular girls. They are at the top of the pack and everyone respects/obeys them
• Everyone must obey the pack leader (the popular girls) or will be cast outside the pack (not be popular)

Lord Of The Flies

• A group of young boys adapting to living on their own on a deserted island after a crash
• Going from the normal world of a child living carefree and depending on parents to living independantly
• Male packs- fighting to become the leader of the pack
• The boys turn to killing each other, hunting down the weaker less popular members
• Hunt other animals such as pigs whilst on the island- animals that are seen to be weaker and easier to target for food
• Gradually lose their clothes the longer they spend on the island. The more time they spend away from human civilisation the more anamalistic traits they seem to take on
• Beat and torture one another- again fighting to show dominance as the strongest male

True Blood

• T.V. series which follows the 'werewolf' pack
• Leaders fight to the death to become leaders of the pack
• The winner of the fight is given a sacrifice of a young virgin girl to have sex with and then slit her throat
• Here the human takes on a clear animal characteristic that is genetic which cannot change, the animal characteristic can take control at any time
• Realistic, the pack leader has first pickings on food, what happens to the pack etc

Starting to create work

To begin my project I wanted to this time experiment with working with a new medium. I chose this time to take the casting elective with Ang as I haven't had much opportunity to learn much so far about casting. Sculpture is a medium that I feel I can really get my teeth into and get involved with.

Using my sewn skeleton design that I created during first term as a template I decided to go on to create a clay sculpture replica of the skeleton head. My original aim was to cast the clay skull after creating it, and make plaster replicas of the original, decorated with symbols of youth culture, such as fake eyelashes, lipstick, big eyebrows etc.

After a group tutorial session we reviewed this idea. Due to my aim being to demonstrate the animalistic qualities in people the feedback was that using a human skull was the wrong way to go about the representation. Feedback tended to take the view that I should be using an animal representation instead.

I found this feedback to be really useful for me, and steered me in the right direction to think about my work and the fact I was being too literal.

I now want to move on by instead casting animal body parts and experimenting with those.


Clay sculpture skeleton head:

What's going on?

Handily for my studio work there has been much discussion recently in the media about the youth culture of today. One thing that has particularly stood out recently is the Facebook trend of NekNominate. Friends nominate each other to drink a pint of alcohol, the more daring the mixture the better. The trend has been seen in the media however for all the wrong reasons. People have become more and more daring with the mixtures that they have created, adding such things as bleach creating a toxic pint. 

So far there have been a few deaths due to NekNominate, people dying from drinking bleach, to people getting too drunk from the deadly dare game and killing themselves. This trend really highlights the stupidity of the youth culture I belong to. Anyone who thinks that drinking bleach and alcohol together clearly has a lack of brain cells.

To me I view NekNominate as a popularity contest. People compete through the internet to attempt to gain the most likes on Facebook, or to be talked about as being daring or funny. It is much like a competition to be seen as the best, as to be popular and talked about is all the youth culture wants. 

Through NekNominate we can see the animalistic qualities of the youth culture of today. Much as male lions compete to be the leader of the pack, we as youth compete for each others attention and popularity. We are stupid, we do not think about the impacts that these things may do to our bodies. 

An article from the Telegraph on NekNominate:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10628721/NekNominate-is-a-deadly-game-of-drink-or-dare.html