I’ve been doing an online course through Coursera for the past few weeks, looking at how artists and animators can use an awareness of art history to enrich their own practice. This is partly because I teach Contextual Studies at work, and also because I miss art historical practice. My undergraduate degree is in art history, and ever since I finished my A Levels, my own artistic practice has ground to a halt. I used to spend hours drawing and making things, and now the only things I make are related to knitting or jewellery. My only artistic outlet is now photography.
As a result, I’ve really enjoyed responding to artistic assignments, and I thought I would share them here, along with the rationale behind each of my works. I’m hoping this will help ease me back into producing more of my own work in future.
The first graded assignment was called “World in a Box”. We were challenged to create a collection of objects and design a means of displaying them, using any means, materials and style we liked. We could work in two or three dimensions, and make the objects or simply collect them. Then we had to photograph the collection, paying attention to the camera frame. This is what I came up with.
We also had to include an explanation. I called mine The Truth Inside (Boxed World), and wrote the following to accompany my submission;
I have chosen to use framing in two different ways; the first level of framing involves the use of the Matryoshka doll, which ‘frames’ smaller versions of itself inside its main body, while the second level of framing involves the use of the camera, exploiting depth of field to place the crisp focus on the smallest inner doll, leaving the outer parts blurred in the background, thus highlighting the importance of true identity.
I should point out that I developed quite a knack for writing the sorts of nonsense that often accompany artistic works in exhibitions!
What do you think?
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