Self / Identity Publication

One thing that I had especially been looking forward to in my last year of study was that I had to create a publication / portfolio of my work over the past year which was to be submitted as part of the final assessment. I'm a perfectionist, I'm not ashamed to say. To be honest, I don't think I would be a true artist if I wasn't. And I also love books. A LOT. They're a slight obsession of mine so when the time came for me to make my own book.. well you can imagine that I was quite excited. There were so many options with what I could do; professionally bound, completely handmade, print it myself, get a printer to do it etc etc. I decided I wanted it to look as professional as I could, for a decent price (which wasn't the case in the end, but I'm still happy!) and also design it in a reasonably straight forward way. 

One of the girls in my class, Rachel suggested this online book publishing place called Blurb that offers a few different sized books and the option of hard or soft covers, ImageWrap covers or ones with a dust jacket, so I was sure that I would find something that suited the kind of book I wanted to make.

Anyway. I got onto choosing what I wanted and then had to teach myself how to use Adobe InDesign which was just so much fun! Blurb has a plugin for InDesign which has templates made up of the book pages, as well as the front and back covers so that made things a lot easier.

Then it was just a matter of choosing exactly what photos I wanted in the publication which was also easy, but the near impossible part was figuring out how I wanted the whole thing set out. Obviously I got there in the end..

So this is the version that I've kept for myself (the expensive one!) and Whitecliffe up in Auckland have got a version that I printed myself, with a card cover and not-so-glossy pages.

I was pretty stoked when this arrived in the mail, to say the least, but now I just want another excuse to design another book. I think I need to do a wee coarse is graphic design to get it out of my system..

Stereotypical Insight

This series is the most recent that I've been working on and is also part of my final assessment / exhibition that will take place sometime next year (yay!). 

When I was first planning what I was going to show for the final assessment, this idea came to mind and my very first intention was to only show a large series of works like these. Although after a critique with my Whitecliffe tutor, it was decided that my plates and the concept behind them was quite strong and they needed to be a part of my final assessment. That was totally fine by me because I'm kind of in love with the physical plates and the photographs of them (which are now a little different to the ones in the link above, but I'll upload the final images of those later) but it meant that I had to rethink my final show. A lot as it turned out. In the end there were a few different components (which again, I'll upload later) and this series was the last one; visually it was the last work seen within the space when everything was hung and conceptually it tied everything together.

As with everything else I've been working on this year this work addresses stereotyping, although I think these may do it in a more literal way than the rest of the work in the final show. The idea behind these came directly from the physical act of stereotyping. My intention was to emulate a first conversation and first encounter with someone new, and bring to light stereotyping by making the viewer aware of the thoughts and opinions that would come to mind when looking at the images and reading the text.

While photographing, I recorded the conversation had between my subjects and myself. I did this without them knowing at first, so they wouldn't be as self conscious about what they were saying as they would be if they were aware they were being recorded. Obviously they were already pretty self conscious since they were having a conversation with someone while a camera was pointing straight at them, but I was sure they would feel worse if they knew beforehand that I was going to be typing up our conversation. 

I told them that I was going to be photographing them, that my project was about stereotyping and I wanted them to be as comfortable as they could be, hence the reason for the constant conversation. Being a little shy myself, I struggled talking to most of the people I photographed so at first it was a bit of a mess of me trying to relax and just be myself while trying to make sure my subjects were relaxed and being themselves so the typed conversation was as close to what they would normally say as possible. 

Abbey Proctor, 2011, Stereotypical insight [digital photographs, typed text]

These works', when shown with the rest of my final work make it easier for the viewer to relate to the work as a whole. The other works' more directly address myself and my leukaemia, so having images of other people in the show opens the viewers eyes and helps them to incorporate themselves in the work and think about themselves in terms of stereotyping. As my tutor said in my end of year review "people like thinking about themselves, so why not help them?".

External Identity Crisis

As said repeatedly I'm sure, my work this year has been a result of my experience with leukaemia and the reactions from strangers I received when I was going through treatment. However, this series is the only one that directly references my illness. It's the result of the wee research project I did I while ago where I got students from my art school to write their opinions and reactions on a few portraits of myself I'd taken when I had just finished treatment but still had no hair. I absolutely loved the words that they had written on the photographs, but fell even more in love with them when I started playing around with how I was going to display them. I really wanted to cut into an actual dictionary and display the pages in the way that I have below, but books are my obsession and I just couldn't bring myself to cut into one, especially a dictionary! So I compromised. This framed 'dictionary', as I like to call it, is put together with photocopied pages of a dictionary I found in the cupboard. If I remember rightly, there are 13 or 14 pages. With each one I cut everything out of the page, except for the word that was written on the portrait, leaving in the columns and page numbers etc. 

I placed the pages on top of each other without really paying attention to which definition was where, with the exception being if one was completely hidden behind another; the result of which is actually quite interesting! One section in particular that I really like is where 'healthy' and 'cancer' are overlapping. Just that small thing explains exactly what I was trying to achieve with this work. Having the pages on top of one another and then placed within the confines of a frame is my way of bringing the opinions together, creating one entity and showing how these often contradicting opinions are about  one person. I'm not sure how the viewer would interpret the dictionary if it was displayed by itself, but when paired with the two portraits below, the meaning is more obvious.

Definitions

I love words. They're one of my favourite things. I'm not quite sure why they are but I have always had a fondness for them. I have a slight obsession with books as well which I'm assuming is where my love for words has come from. I love how some people are so, so talented when it comes to ordering words in such a way, that the end result is a beautiful, flowing sentence, which turns into a paragraph, which turns into a story that turns into a gorgeous, bound novel. 

I also love the dictionary. I can't remember ever being someone who has sat down for the purpose of reading the dictionary, but I would much rather find out the correct spelling for a word through use of a dictionary rather than the wee digital dictionary sitting at the bottom of my screen in the dock. I especially love our dictionary we've got here. It's falling apart like all fantastic, loved books should. When I finally move out, I'm taking it with me. I don't care how much my mum protests. (Just like I'm also leaving with her Edmonds cookbook, even though I got given a new hard covered one for my 21st. She doesn't know this either.)

What I love most about a dictionary isn't that it is filled with knowledge and words and generally consists of fantastic, thin pages (I do love those thin pages!), but it's the way the definitions are set out. I have absolutely no idea why this is either.. but I have always, always loved them.

So came into being, my epiphany. 

Instead of just listing all of the words that have been written onto my cancer portraits or trying to form them into some kind of story-like format, why don't I find the definitions of each word and make a list of them?? There's three pages altogether and they look pretty cool! Unfortunately I'm not skilled enough to teach myself how to manually resize images on here so I've just copied and pasted them so you can have a read. It's all of them. I didn't want to leave some out because I wouldn't know which ones not to show. Some of the definitions are actually quite lovely. When reading through them I realised that not every technical definition is exactly the same as what I thought it was (and probably the person who wrote them).

That's the end of my wee spiel. Have a wee read through them and maybe if you have some ideas on how I could display them, let me know :)

bold |bōld|

adjective

1 (of a person, action, or idea) showing an ability to take risks; confident and courageous : a bold attempt to solve the crisis | he was the only one bold enough to air his dislike.

will ²

noun

• (also willpower) control deliberately exerted to do something or to restrain one's own impulses : a stupendous effort of will.

brave |brāv|

adjective

ready to face and endure danger or pain; showing courage : a brave soldier | he put up a brave fight before losing.

strong |strô ng |

adjective ( stronger |strô ng gər|, strongest |strô ng gist|)

2 able to withstand great force or pressure : cotton is strong, hard-wearing, and easy to handle.

• (of a person's constitution) not easily affected by disease or hardship.

healthy |ˈhelθē|

adjective ( healthier , healthiest )

in good health: : feeling fit and healthy.

neo-Nazi

noun ( pl. neo-Nazis )

a member of an organization similar to the German Nazi Party.

• a person of extreme racist or nationalist views.

alone |əˈlōn|

adjective & adverb

1 having no one else present; on one's own : [as predic. adj. ] she was alone that evening | [as adv. ] he lives alone.

• [as adj. ] isolated and lonely : she was terribly alone and exposed.

freedom |ˈfrēdəm|

noun

the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint : we do have some freedom of choice | he talks of revoking some of the freedoms. See note at liberty .

lesbian |ˈlezbēən|

noun

a homosexual woman.

cult |kəlt|

noun

a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object : the cult of St. Olaf.

honest |ˈänist|

adjective

free of deceit and untruthfulness; sincere : I haven't been totally honest with you.

white supremacy

noun

the belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, esp. the black race, and should therefore dominate society.

skinhead |ˈskinˌhed|

noun

a young person with close-cropped hair, often perceived as aggressive, violent, and racist, and having neo-Nazi tendencies.

cancer |ˈkansər|

noun

the disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body : he's got cancer | smoking is the major cause of lung cancer.

• a malignant growth or tumor resulting from such a division of cells : most skin cancers are curable.

 test ¹ |test|

noun

• an event or situation that reveals the strength or quality of someone or something by putting them under strain : this is the first serious test of the peace agreement.

liberated |ˈlibəˌrātid|

adjective

1 (of a person) showing freedom from social conventions or traditional ideas, esp. with regard to sexual roles : the modern image of the independent, liberated woman.

free |frē|

adjective ( freer |ˈfrēər|, freest |ˈfrēəst|)

1 not under the control or in the power of another; able to act or be done as one wishes : I have no ambitions other than to have a happy life and be free | a free choice.

individual |ˌindəˈvijəwəl|

adjective

1 [ attrib. ] single; separate : individual tiny flowers.

journey |ˈjərnē|

noun ( pl. -neys)

an act of traveling from one place to another : she went on a long journey | figurative your journey through life.

alopecia |ˌaləˈpē sh (ē)ə|

noun Medicine

the partial or complete absence of hair from areas of the body where it normally grows; baldness.