Artist inspiration

A variety of artists have used similar mediums as the one I plan to use with this project. I have drawn inspiration from:

Originally, when I was looking as using people as landscape objects i looked into Kim Weston and Karin Rosenthal. I enjoy that both of these artists' use of black and white, which was what I studied in the first time I studied photography at school. I enjoy how it can say a lot while still being extremely simple; that it is both classic and modern at the same time.

Karin Rosenthal

 



Kim Weston



After talking to Matt, I expored what other artisits used to create landscapes. I enjoyed Sian Bonnell's use of food and Laura Letinskys lack of food. I think if I had more time I would expole this idea more. Using food as landscapes. Imagine a whole city scape of foods...a dark and somewhat muted cityscape in chocolate in comparsion to the bright and colourful world of fruit and veges. I imagine that would require both a lot of time, financial investment and space amoungst other things; like huge amounts of creative vision. 



Lauras work quickly took me toward Martina Mullaneys "Turn in" series. This series created my focus on beds as a subject. While my work does not have the depth that Martinas does - she studied lonliness and introspection through the beds at homeless shelters in the UK, i enjoyed the simplicity of her images. I liked her use of colour - ususally somthing associated with happiness and joy in such a contrasting situation. However, I know of very few bedrooms with such brightly coloured walls which I could access in the short period of time which this project was running over. I did however return to my childhood home (where my parents still live) and take some images including my bright blue bedroom walls.

Leading on from Marinas images I got to thinking about Tracy Emin (we talked about her during the time project) and her "Unmade bed" exibition. This show piece discussed the intamicy of a persons bed, and the things that go on not only in bed but in the room a bed is kept. While searching for her work, I was also reminded of Imogen Cunninghams work "The Unmade Bed" which was my most relevent precedent. I enjoy that Imogens image is something that people surely see almost every day, without realising it.




Tracy Emin

Imogen Cunningham - Unmade Bed



Strangely, while searching "unmade bed" I also discovered that Sonic Youth, an American band who first formed in the early 80's have a song by the same name:

"A man like thats like an unmade bed" the song discusses the return to a harmful relationship. Is that the bed? Who knows, for some an unmade bed is a thing to shy away from, everyone always talks about getting into a freshly made bed with clean sheets, but for some, the return to an unmade bed is comforting and soothing. Similar to going to your mum for a hug.

To end, Im going to explore this idea of landscapes in bed. I will be using Black and White and I will explore the bed and the sheets on it in a number of ways.