“Just another Face in the Crowd”
My Urban Environment project was initially based on people. I was interested in the habitual movement of people in their urban environment. I then became interested in the concept of “The destruction of beauty”. Moving from the country to the city I felt an immense pressure to be beautiful. All these advertisements surrounded me and smothered me with products and ways to make me beautiful, I just felt so drowned. I then began to think of this pressure and how it can lead to a person’s own demise. I took the Barbie doll, in my opinion, a symbol of absolute beauty, of what we all should look like. So, I burned them, I burned babies to show my frustration and to demonstrate the concept of “the destruction of beauty”.
After this, I began to pay close attention to the human form to answer “Why”, why we do this to ourselves and just to satisfy a general curiosity as to how we move the way we move and why. After a shaky progress review I began to take matters to my own hands, dropping in on a life drawing class back home to really understand the concept of the human form and movement of the human body. During this time, I also felt a deep isolation and was compelled to express it through paint. In studying the human form I came across hands. I found the hand to be exceptionally interesting as hands hold us together, make us feel strong, offer us comfort when we need it most, they can be used for encouragement. However there is another side to hands often found in the urban environment, the violent side, hands can be used to hurt, to hurt people too. I wanted to highlight this problem also through my study of the human hands. I also took inspiration from Kathy Prendergast to cross-reference my work and create something new and wonderful.
I was altogether truly inspired by Berlinde De Bruykcere, her wax sculptures of the human form inspired me to create a series of heads that I then places around Limerick city to highlight aspects of the Urban Environment. I then decided to use different materials also. I experimented using chocolate, jelly, butter, etc. after this I was further inspired by De Bruyckere’s use of old battered plinths and unusually furnishings to display her work. I then used the confessional booth in college and my vintage blanket to display my wax figure heads. I then also became interested in light and darkness and, shadows and contrasts of the faces.
Finally I believed these faces ensured me with a wonderful aspect to my project called “Just another Face in the Crowd”. Highlighting how people are often lost, forgotten and left behind due to personal vanities and the destruction of beauty within the urban environment. I also began a series of textile studies to coincide with the human form. I honed in on the idea of the ribcage, it acts as an entrapment and a cage for protection, survival, almost as if it protects the hub of the body, where most of the precious activity goes on, just like In an urban environment where it is a hub of precious activity for its surrounding area. I hope my enthusiasm and energy to my project has been depicted to you today and I hope you share that enthusiasm also in my work.
