{"id":105,"date":"2020-05-13T16:17:55","date_gmt":"2020-05-13T15:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/limit\/?p=105"},"modified":"2020-05-27T14:15:05","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T13:15:05","slug":"creating-artwork-on-and-with-the-body-fascination-feminism-and-fashion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/limit\/2020\/05\/13\/creating-artwork-on-and-with-the-body-fascination-feminism-and-fashion\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating Artwork on and with the Body \u2013 Fascination, Feminism and Fashion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In starting my Fine Art degree at university, I, like everyone else in my cohort, was faced with the scary and exciting opportunity to create artwork about absolutely anything we liked at all. Immediately, I knew I wanted to create work about the body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exploring corporeality and \u2018the meat of the body\u2019 is something that artists have forever been tied to. Whether the works are heavily representational and realistic (or \u2018mimetic\u2019) as seen in early Renaissance and Baroque paintings by artists such as Tiziano Vicelli and Caravaggio, or more performative, interactive and sensual performances as seen in art by Marina Abramovi\u0107 and Bruce Nauman, the common denominator across eras seems to be that artists are ceaselessly inspired to examine their own – and others\u2019 – bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For my degree practice, I made a somewhat wobbly start to approaching the body. Merely focussing on the visual, I had created odd sculptures and paintings that I loved but did not quite have the critical means to justify. Truthfully, all I could say was I examined the body\u2019s form for the sole reason that I found it visually interesting (sadly, however, I came to discover that that level of reasoning doesn\u2019t quite cut it when you\u2019re in higher education).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In later trying to get to the core of why<\/em> I was so fascinated with studying the body in my practice, I didn\u2019t necessarily clarify my need to engage with it (and in fact, I\u2019m not sure I really ever will), but this process of questioning myself and my creative pursuits opened up a number of ways which I could explore the topic more specifically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, as a female artist, it can somewhat feel a rite of passage to make work on what it is like \u2018to be a woman\u2019, especially when starting out at a professional level. I had not quite set out with the intention for any of my work to exist as \u2018feminist commentary\u2019 initially, howeverI soon came to realise that when you create pieces on the female form, disentangling it from such discourse is near impossible (nor would I want to do so, might I add).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, I was guided rather naturally to exploring the female body in art as possessing the potential to be both liberating and <\/em>limiting, empowering and<\/em> degrading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I firstly experimented with approaching the body in a tactile and playful manner. I practiced drawing it with my eyes closed and relying on touch to create pieces inspired by Robert Morris\u2019 \u2018blind time drawings\u2019 (1973-2009); I painted it black and pressed it against surfaces to create prints reminiscent of Yves Klein\u2019s somewhat questionable \u2018human paintbrush\u2019 performances of the 60s (titled Anthropometries)<\/em>. I also<\/em> explored different methods of censoring<\/em> the nude body during both the shooting and editing processes in photography. I used physical methods (such as covering the body or camera lens partially) and digital methods (altering levels of contrast and clarity). These experiments led to my most proud pieces involving multiple latex \u2018skins\u2019 which I had created to cover the body in both photoshoots and filmed performances (finally manifesting in ripping the latex off as inspired by both Yoko Ono\u2019s Cut Piece<\/em> (1965) and the works of Carolee Schneemann).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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