Up until this point my artistic endeavours have been for myself. Since attending the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (ECIAD), I have been exposed to new techniques, explorations in emotions and the materiality of a medium in relation to my work. Now is the time for me to take a reflexive evaluation of my past work in relation to the theories I have been learning, in order to compile a praxis paper and allow for a new perspective about my art. This allows for me to see where I have come from which energizes the potential for my work in the future. Yet, what is my practise? How does all the work created in the past four years relate to my practise? Does theory inform my work? How will my new found consciousness of theory influence my art in the future? What is my current practise articulating? I can see how all my work essentially manifests the prior questions, for the sake of this praxis, I will examine only three of my works and how they fit into the stream of theory. With the aid of theory and artist talks from Theory is My Co-Pilot, I explore what praxis means to me as an artist.

My present work has been a sense of emotional responses to past experiences, especially childhood trauma of sickness and near death experiences. Due to my early exposure to death, it informs my work like no other trope. My artistic actions are all emotional responses to the fear, anxiety, comforts and pleasures that death holds in my life. My relationship with death is subconscious and manifests in ambiguous ways. I am not completely sure of how death informs the work, for I feel I have just become aware of its presence, and I do not care to psychoanalyze myself or the work for it is not a concern of mine. I do admit that the work is auto-biographical. They are self portraits of emotional manifestations, but not literal self portraits. I want my art to be unfixed in meaning and free from self indulgent tendencies. Therefore, consciousness and sub-consciousness oscillate during the process when making the work.

My process is not purely intuitive and it does swim with the current of certain theories. I cannot consciously say that a work is feminist, or that it reflects post-structuralism, but I am aware that it may exist within these theories. I agree with Judy Radul's statement in her Artist Talk at ECIAD that she' doesn't use theory because it uses you.' I can also relate to her analogy that she 'doesn't use theory, like a fish doesn't use water, but lives within it.' Theoretical ideas of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, George Herbert Mead, Hannah Arendt, and Simone De Beauvoir, have introduced new insights into my practise and undoubtedly inform my attitude about the world around me which I bring to my work. Yet, I think this attitude reveals itself in the praxis of art, more than as subject matter in the work. I allow my emotions to dictate the medium, be it painting or sculpture, and after finding the essential material, I allow myself to play with the medium to devise with a new object. This way the meaning is directed to a specific gesture and emotion (usually from death), yet is not a fixed meaning for the viewer. All my work stems from my inability to articulate my fears, anxiety, comforts and pleasures towards death. I do not know any other way of dealing with these emotions. Louise Bourgeois admits to reliving her past to create art which articulates how emotional reactions can be cathartic and also create vibrant contemporary art. In her Art is a Guaranty of Sanity(See Fig. 1.0)articulates for me how important creating art is for one's sanity, for the viewer and artist alike.Similar to Bourgeois praxis, my process is relying on emotional and subconscious impulses to begin a work. This impulse is present in all of my work, especially the three I will be discussing. I can see this process of creating being attributed to what Giorgio Agamben calls 'the gag' (58.9). I choke on emotions alone, and I need art to articulate my thoughts, fears, and pleasures because the frame work of language is not enough to express them. This is why I make art, and it is what inspires me to create. I see how theory has unconsciously informed my work without really realizing it. How will this new found consciousness of theory influence my praxis in the future?

Telepathic Butterfly (See Fig. 1.1) is a mobile made from my Aunt's fur coat and chicken wire, which have been manipulated into large oversized butterflies. This piece was created just after my Aunt's passing during foundation year. I was incessantly thinking about her and issues' relating to death since this was one of my first experiences with it. The idea for Telepathic Butterfly came from stream of consciousness writing; 'I wear my grief like a fashionable fur coat' This was questioning how I wear my grief and if I could ever return to an innocent life unaffected by death. After my experiences with death, it clung to me, changed my perspective on life and I presented myself differently to the world. This work was based in a reflection of loss and sadness as a spectacle. I did not want death to distort my self image but undeniably death affects personal one's outlook. At the same time, I found a passage from Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions:

Like all Earthlings at the point of death, Mary Young sent faint reminders to those who had known her. She released a small cloud of telepathic butterflies, and one of these brushed the cheek of Dwayne Hoover.' (64)

This quote moved me because it gave me a link from my thoughts of my Aunt to imagery that could manifest itself in reality. Instead of allowing my grief to paralyze me, I decided to embrace this imagery, and Telepathic Butterflies were the result. In hindsight this project relates to what Ben Reeves said in his artist statement for the exhibition Smoke, Cars and Flowers;

In my work I am ruminating on how representations are internalized, then projected outwards mapped onto the world. I am interested in how representation alters and shapes our physical experience and perception of reality.

Telepathic Butterflies could be articulated by how Reeves describes his work because I too had internalized representation, fictional and real, and the butterfly was projected outward into reality. This altered my physical experience because I found I could create from my emotions and represent my internal experience through art. In a way, Telepathic Butterflies reminds me of Jorge Luis Borges short story Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius because it is a mixture of reality and fiction. My emotions manifested into a real object which was thing inspired by a work of fiction. The work oscillates between the material and immaterial. It is a representational manifestation of grief, inspired by fiction and reality.


Fig. 1.2
The Climax of the Firework (See Fig. 1.2) is a large painting created in third year at ECIAD. I was introduced to Jean Baudrillard and 'the simulacra' in Patrik Andersson's Art Now: Studies in Contemporary Art course when I decided to create a hyperreal painting of a firework. This was the first work where I was openly reflecting upon a theory. A photograph of the firework was taken by a friend of mine, which I used as a reference for the painting and it is thus a copy of a copy. I chose the firework because its essence is to give fleeting consumable pleasure. The nature of a firework is to rise to an instant climax, what the viewer craves, and ascends to death, leaving the viewer wanting more. I froze the firework in its climax because it gives the viewer what they want, but not truly, for it is a fixed sign. The work is stuck in an endgame, giving the viewer what they want, but failing because it is only a simulation. The viewer will never see the firework ascend or descend or witness the drama of its nature. I was trying the impossibility of warding off death. Capturing a firework, frozen in time, with no ascent or descent creates a fictional situation, giving no narrative. I can relate the meaning of the firework to Roland Barthes the Third Meaning. Although this theory is based on film stills, I argue The Climax of the Firework is a ridiculous still of a firework. The obvious meaning I prescribe is purely pleasurable and the choice of this subject matter is meant to give viewing pleasure. The symbolic meaning is an attempt to represent prolonging the inevitable, trying to freeze time at a peak, which fails. Life continues on for me, but the painting stays frozen. It is a pathetic endgame because, in essence, how is a painting supposed to stop time? This is where I find Barthes notion of the 'obtuse meaning' which extends beyond our knowledge and culture while denying any future by defeating the nature of a firework. To rise to climax and fade away, on to the next explosion which is a useless exertion (44 Barthes). It poses the ontological questions of capturing and representing through painting and subject matter. Somewhat like Radul's ontological explorations in her film work And So Departed (Again)(2004) I explored paintings relationship with representation and reality. With the piece And So Departed (Again), Radul embraces films failure to represent death in performance because it naturally has an insufficiency of representation. Reality and the nature of film show its own inability to achieve these goals. The ontological difference between reality and representation in painting informs the viewer about both. Reality and time cannot be stopped, death is inevitable, and a painting is only a disparate and pathetic attempt to freeze time.

The sculptural installation John Doesy Doe (Fig. 1.3) is a work in progress and made from fabricated ceramic bones and bits of old carpet. Halfway through making this project I realized the importance of death as a theme in all of my work. Telepathic Butterfly was an emotional reaction to death, Climax of a Firework was a theory driven exploration of death and John Dosey Doe is an open acknowledgment of this common thread of death.

The theme of Simulacrum is also a part of this work because I fabricated human bones out of ceramic from an anatomy book which is a copy of a copy like Climax of a Firework. This work also takes into consideration Fluxus and Surrealist processes, as well as ideas of the Duchampian Readymade. I found old carpet and made the bones, and decided to assemble the material without a plan. The results were these strange creatures which could be dancing, fighting or any form of action. My obvious meaning is to create something new out of a material struggle between a found object and a handmade object, and how they might speak about one another. The symbolic meaning was to represent unidentified remains and the concealment of death in our culture. By using bones and an old rug to create new objects, without a hierarchy of material, I believe I have metaphorically taken the skeletons out of the cultural closet and posed a question; what does it mean to embrace the dead instead of conceal them? I approached the process of making these creatures with no design in mind, only what the materials could dictate and thus leaving their presence open to interpretation. Are they dancing? Are they fighting? This is where the obtuse meaning lies. Like Radul, I am dealing with the materiality of the dead. Radul explores the dead 'lump' left onstage during a performance whereas I am dealing with representing our dead in reality. Similarly Louise Bourgeois' practise of working informs this work because like most of my art, her work stems from a conscious/subconscious connection within memories and past experiences and she relies on this for fodder. Her way of working from emotional response to her past is inspiring to me. Bourgeois influences my work like Jimmy Durham influences the work of Merritt Johnson.

Through critically observing the artist talks and readings provided in class, I have come to many theories about my own artistic process. I have been working from the space between sub-consciousness and consciousness, which creates work informed by both. I have a better understanding of theories which pertain to my work and I am excited to see how the marriage of conscious intellect and creative unconscious create thought provoking, and honest work. Theory allows for work to be open to debate and conversation. My intuitive unconscious allows my work to be genuine and personal and I cannot wait to see where this takes my art.

Works Cited

  • Agamben, Gorgio. ' Notes on Gesture' 333 Art History Coursepack. Ed. Randy Lee Cutler. Vancouver. Emily Carr Institute, Spring 2008. 50.1- 58.9.
  • Andersson, Patrik. 'Art of the Enlightened False Conscious.' Lecture. Art History 304: Art Now: Studies in Contemporary Art. Emily Carr Institute. Vancouver. 13 September 2007.
  • Barthes, Roland. 'TheThird Meaning' 333 Art History Coursepack. Ed. Randy Lee Cutler. Vancouver. Emily Carr Institute, Spring 2008. 41-62.
  • Borges, Jorge Luis. 'Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertus' 333 Art History Coursepack. Ed. Randy Lee Cutler. Vancouver.Emily Carr Institute, Spring 2008. 3-18.
  • Johnson, Merritt. Artist Talk. 333 Art History: Theory is My Co-pilot. Emily Carr Institute. Vancouver. 31 January 2008.
  • Radul, Judy. Artist Talk. 333 Art History: Theory is My Co-pilot. Emily Carr Institute. Vancouver. 24 January 2008.
  • Reeves, Ben. 'Smoke,Cars, Flowers 'Jessica Bradley Gallery. 15 September' 6 October 2007.
  • Vonnegut, Kurt. Breakfast of Champions. Dell Publishing. New York. 1973. P.64

Images Cited