Evaluation

To try and encapsulate my thoughts about the negative impact that stereotyping can have on people, I wanted to portray a celebration of our individuality. Groups of people are categorised into models that seem to fit their personality. Stereotypes occur when people are similar and so these people are labelled to all be the same, instead of being recognised for their complex individuality. However, it is known that these stereotypes are never accurate and so I wanted to challenge their presence within our society. I researched into how we collate information about others and situations and found that we all have schemas which influence the way that we judge a person/situation. A schema is an innate biological device that is formed through experience which helps in future scenarios to assess situations. Conversely, these schemas usually aid us in spotting dangers, whereas a stereotype applies a label to an individual unnecessarily.

I had a clear initial focus on which part of stereotyping I was going to investigate; looking at men and how they portray emotion. As a society, there have been recent attempts to rid of this kind of stereotype, for example, the new British Army campaign that states that its okay to cry, as well as these notions being taken by modern music artists, presented in Paloma Faith's - Crybaby. They have portrayed this idea through advertisement and song, and I have been inspired to reflect this through fine art. These two notions have influenced me as my Dad's side of my family is heavily military and so I think it is important for them to show their emotion, as well as Paloma Faith's song, as I listen to her regularly, seeing her twice in concert and meeting her once. I have taken this use of words in advertisement and song to add direct meaning to my experiments that responded to Barbara Kruger.
Continuing on, I performed a photo shoot, taking portraits of a female and male to add a figurative element to my work, to make the theme surrounding people more direct. Cutting into these photographs writing stereotypical words related to the genders created an immediate effect on the viewer as my concept is clear. Following a military theme, I used photographs from my Dad's service to represent the ideologies of a soldier being a fearless, contrasted with the internal emotions of
concern and anxiety.

Having hit a rut with exploring my concept through words, I found another artist, Guy Catling who alters images, infusing them with colour. As I was using a limited colour palette before when working in the style of Kruger, I think that injecting colour into my work made its so much more exciting. It meant that I was able to present a wider range of moods, from dull to adventurous ones. I sought photographs that I had taken whilst on trips to places that I had been to since the start of February to fuel my experiments. I adapted Catling's application of colour to fit the exploration of the reductive process, by placing vibrant wallpaper beneath the photograph, instead of on top like Catling does. This technique provided a sleek, sophisticated outcome and so this was a major turning point in my work. I began to refine this technique, looking at the arrangement of colour and how I can use this to ignite emotions revolving around stereotyping. To invigorate these refinements, I put together an experimental sketchbook where I trialled many different techniques using several mediums to see what effect this would display. I particularly valued the energetic colour that drawing ink implements and so I tried using this in the foreground of my Catling responses. After doing so,I found visual influence from Yuji Hamada (a photographer) that inspired me to print onto my work. Even though I had used printing before in my earlier sketchbooks, it wasn't until I seen Hamada's work that I thought about applying this to the recent studies. As I was to begin printing, I needed to find a shape that captured wholesomeness and virtue,leading me to using circular objects for printing. As the ink absorbed into the photographs, I needed to use a denser medium that still enlivened the composition and so I chose acrylic paint. The application of these prints provided organic marks that reinstate my concept of celebrating each other as individuals instead of stereotyping. There was a contrast between the structured photograph beneath and the organic marks which revealed the difference between a dull stereotype and an eccentric individual. As this refinement encapsulated my concept efficiently, I determined that I was going to use these techniques in my final outcome.

Furthermore, I investigated the artist Shaun Kardinal that embroiders postcards and responded to them by sewing words that are relevant to my concept,like 'cry', into my own photographs. However, these experiments didn't progress as I envisaged but then I began to look at how Kardinal arranged his work. His arrangements are what influenced me greatly,as he fuses together several compositions to make one larger one. This idea has allowed me to bring together many compositions to reflect how we should all be together as one. This message is subtle but I wanted to make the viewer inquisitive as to what it meant. Moreover, I think this subtle message also allows the viewer to take a personal stance as to what the meaning is, which is important as I wanted to draw out everybody's uniqueness.