Individual Project Appraisal

The initial aim of this project was to try and recreate my ambition or dream of having an ideal ‘state of mind’.

For me that would be to be able to think of ‘nothing’ or have a quiet mind.  I also created a survey and asked people what they thought of if they were asked to imagine a blank space.

The conclusion was that the majority of people thought a blank space to be of a white nature.  This is also what I imagine.  This might be for me because of the connotations of purity and heaven that the color white represents. 

I researched color theory and found inspiration from minimalist artists but found it difficult to achieve the results I wanted.

I examined the work of artists such as Martin Creed, Yayoi Kusama, Mark Rothko, Ute Barth, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Yves Klein and Ceal Floyer.

All of these artists produce work that is based on the notion of emotions and analyzing ones thoughts and psychological states.

Rothko used Freud’s and Jung’s theories about dreams and the ‘unconscious’ to influence his work.

This then made me want to discover my reasoning as to why I was trying to create a blank space or a sense of nothingness.

An overactive mind is a negative I feel but after researching theories and reading ‘The Interpretations of Dreams’ by Freud I tried to attempt to access my unconscious and focused on artifacts that remind me of my son to channel my thoughts creatively and brought them to the surface instead of shutting them away. 

Freud believes the only way one can have a clearer and ‘healthier’ state of mind is by assessing sometimes unpleasant thoughts and analyzing them before your mind can change these thoughts.  I suppose I have used this project as a form of therapy to assess the absence of my child.

I have used a white color palette and an over exposed technique to produce a dreamlike quality and to introduce color theory.

Even though my final images show still life’s of sculptural objects for me they are loaded with the notion of absence.

Dissemination was executed throughout this work by creating online links and pages on social networking sites.  The use of printed postcards with a barcode on linked to the website of our online magazine can be distributed in many locations providing a low cost and effective way of promoting our work.

The online magazine can also be ordered online for individual and multiple printed hard copies if the viewer wishes to purchase.  This is a cost effective way of publishing magazines.

A photographer contact of mine Benjamin McMahon agreed to feature in our magazine also with his ‘Pictures from Home’ series.  The sense of nostalgia is clear in his work, which is coherent to our overall theme.

I enjoyed collaborating with the three other photographers, feature artists and a student magazine publisher to produce our final outcome.  We will continue to produce quarterly editions of our magazine including the founders and other feature artists.

Shoot 2

The following images are possessions that I keep that remind me of my son.  Instead of trying to recreate ‘nothing’ i have tried to constructively channel my thoughts influenced by readings of Freud’s theories.  I have still continued with the minimilatitic approach seen in my first shoot but instead have focused on items that I treasure to try and understand why I wish to think of ‘nothing’.  I feel the images are still loaded with absence even though then portray an object. 

Further Research – Mark Rothko

‘Rothko’s use of mythology as a commentary on current history was not novel. Rothko, Gottlieb, and Newman read and discussed the works of Freud and Jung, in particular their theories concerning dreams and the archetypes of the collective unconscious, and they understood mythological symbols as images that operate in a space of human consciousness that transcends specific history and culture.^[29] Rothko later said his artistic approach was “reformed” by his study of the “dramatic themes of myth.” He allegedly stopped painting altogether in 1940 to immerse himself in Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough and Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams.^[30]‘

Alberto Zamboni