Summer Project

The brief for the summer project was to plan an installation project around a politically aware theme. I was slightly stumped with this task as political art is not normally an area of art I delve into, I recognise its importance but in general it rarely interests me. It took me a while before I could think of a starting point and from research I stumbled upon an activist Instagram user;

Glacier Girl uses social media and trending themes of visually pleasing aesthetic photography to raise environmental awareness. I really like this approach of advertisement as it reaches the demographic that has the time, energy, and potential resources to actually create change. Her choice to create eye pleasing images is also something I recognise with as I like to create visually interesting images to portray whatever I'm trying to convey. The environmental stance her images has prompted me to run along side this theme too as I've decided to base my project around saving the bees. 

Step 1: Bees

I was unable to find may bee themed art pieces and projects out there but I did find one by louis Masai. It was a graffiti style installation based in the streets of London. He said he wanted to create something that brought an issue that occurs in countryside areas of the country to more urban environments, to show how the issue of colony collapse disorder may not be happening near where people live but is still affecting them. 

Save The Bees - Louis Masai

Save The Bees - Louis Masai

Save The Bees - Louis Masai

Even though I'm passionate about this subject I'm still very uninspired in regards to how i want the images to look or even be displayed, most of what I've found online has been small draw pieces that have been posted to tumblr or other social media but no installations or projects. I also have no idea if I could think of a way to use Glacier Girls style of art with the bee theme. 

Step 2: Plastic Bags

So, I kind of had an epiphany about plastic bags, and how I could do this project on them. I'm still going to use inspiration from Glacier Girl and aspects from Louis Masai's work. My main idea was around how the images will look. I want them to be minimalist bust shots of subjects, little to no makeup, simple sleek hair and then to have them being "consumed" by plastic (bags, for example) and/or be entrapped by it, like when sea creatures get trapped in beer rings. 

Excuse my bad drawing

From this I the project has a slight ocean theme as plastic most obviously effects the ocean then other habitats. Because of the animal underlining of this subject I briefly considered having animal subjects but, most protest pieces of this subject are of animals so on one had I want to create something different from what the public have seen already and also I feel by using human subjects it brings the issue closer to home. the aesthetic of the images is very much inspired from Glacier Girl, with clean imagery, simple clean skin and contrasting/highlighted subject matter. 

Save the Maldives - glacier996girl

glacier996girl

#globalisation - glacier996girl

As for presentation of this collection my initial thoughts were in a gallery but it wouldn't work as not everyone would see it and I want it to be something found everywhere. I feel the project could be found on billboards but idk if it'll have the impact I need. 

I then thought of how cigarette packets and tabaco pouches have the health warnings on the pouches themselves, images of the worst that could happen through smoking. So from that I thought that I should have the images on bio-degradable plastic bags. I think I'd have them be a free alternative to the 5p bags you get so the public will be more inclined to go for them as an option to get the art to the public quicker. I feel this project could be done relatively easily the only tough areas would be making the bags and getting them distributed.