plastic surgery

review

Review

I started my FMP off by looking into expressing how our generation of people are nowadays.Stereotypes,bullying,feeling invisible,fakery,celebrities etc.I searched and searched into different ideas and artists and tried out different things.This was when i was focused into expressionism art and protest art.I was looking into Barbie dolls and stereotypes to do with boys and girls growing up and what they have to be like.I then started to go off track and I was very interested in Liu Bolins work,Dissolved into the background to express his concerns,expressions and thoughts to the society and the environment around it.Expressing his concerns and questions to the unfair treatment they received as artists in china.It was his protest to the government.I thought this related to what I wanted to do as its like feeling invisible in a way to be disguised in the background and not feeling important enough for society.I painted my friend in all black paint and stood her infront of a black sheet,starting simple to practice,and maybe in the future work with a more difficult background.I then thought about using this idea and making it into my own by getting some recycled derelict materials together and creating a garment and taking picture of someone wearing it in a derelict area.

I was stuck at this point as I loved this idea and wanted to portray that but I had the other part of my idea I wanted to do so I needed to wake up and make a decision on one or the other.

The idea i was hooked on was the "ideal" beauty,fakery,and how us females have to look and have to do to be "pretty".I decided to throw away the invisible,derelict Idea because I tried hard to make it relate somehow to this one but it was too irrelevant and I had more work and research for this one.I couldn’t mix the two together.

At first i looked into Barbie dolls that are for young girls to grow up with and make them think that thats what you have to look like.As i got more into it i looked into makeup,the chemicals behind it.Plastic surgery became one of my ideas and played with that idea for most of my FMP.I loved the idea I got from Annegret Soltau as she plays with different parts of the face and in quite an odd,funny way.she alters different parts of the body from different people together by stitch to take the mic out of platic surgery in a way.and I played with that idea using images from magazines and stitching them together,it was also amusing,making the face disformed,also wrapping celotape around my friends face to make it disformed and playing around with camera effects.

I tried different materials such as modroc,clay,paper mashie to make a 3D piece,also using pins and needles to relate to platic surgery.I created big dramatic,botox lips,very moldy looking and bright pink with needles sticking out of them.I tried out modrocing one of the doll heads from 3D,after doing that,when it had dried,adding more modroc to certain parts of the face to make it look more dramatic and fake,making the cheeks,lips look big,the nose lookin sharp and the eyebrows looking bold.I then came across Lucy Mcrae and Bart Hess’ work and play with the idea of plastic surgery a lot,a lot  of their ideas was making the face look disformed.

I then thought "what else to women feel they have to do for society to like them"...Anorexia.

I researched into it,what women and men go through when they feel they have to be skinny to be accepted into society.I didn’t want to go off track again so I thought of ways to relate it to plastic surgery instead of wasting my time on something im not going to portray.I didn’t want to think too hard on it though so I carried on and went with the flow of my work.I looked into bones and bone fashion.Surprsingly there is a lot of amazing work in the fashion industry to do with bones.When I came across elsa schiaparelli’s skeleton dress I definetly got focused to design and create something like that.

My final piece is a full long simple black dress,with a zip in the side and a high neck.I wanted to keep it simple but obviously show what im wanting to put across.Using wire underneath the dress I created the look of rib bones in the dress and part of a coat hanger as the collar bones making it look slightly more dramatic.To link this with plastic surgery,instead of making this as a garment to wear,it is a piece of art to look at as I have used pins and needles that are stuck in the mannican.This is because,women obviously have plastic surgery because they want it and they want to look a certain way.Its the same with anorexia,they’re wanting to see their rib bones through their skin.

I feel ok with my work although there are a lot of things I would change for my final piece.I don’t feel ive gone to my full potential for this which bothers me as I could of have done more work on the dress but still making it look simple but more detail on it.Possibly stitching on the dress to make the bones more pattern like and fashionable using wadding instead of wire.Also a lot more skecthwork as I feel that is my strong point.I feel that the wire and pins was a good idea as it feels more like bones rather than if I used wadding it would have been too soft.If I could go back I would have put more thought into my exhibition to make it look more professional and interesting.Its slightly messy and I would of liked to neaten it up,and I would of liked to carry on with the Annergret Soltau work and made more collage work using stitch.