Specialist Study – Evaluation

I have really enjoyed this module because we were able to choose, so i decided to delve into the realm of graffiti, because i find that really interesting and the culture behind it, because in the photography side of things graffiti is so interesting because its always changing, especially in legal spots, where it is always changing so that’s really interesting.

So i also like to work with colour in mass ways, i like to enhance the colours in my photos instead of making them black and white or dim because i feel like with graffiti, you need to bring the colour in to make it more interesting to look at, compared to just a little tag in a colour, on a random wall compared to huge pieces full of colour.

I wanted to go into the graffiti side of things because i found interest in it in school during my a levels doing an a level in fine art, i also really enjoy the controversial side of things because of how Banksy came about, also with artists like Robbo and JR which are also very political graffiti artists, who change there locations on a regular basis trying not to get caught.

The mischievous art of graffiti, is all about getting your work out for people to see so some graffiti artists spray on trains, on walls where the train track is, to get there work seen and there names known to everyone, so they could get recognised for their work instead of no one knowing about them they feel they have to showcase their work anywhere.

Deciding to go down this road wasnt the easiest decision as, there isn’t a lot of leeway on certain types of graffiti, but i thought that street art photography hasn’t really showed up that much compared to portrait or landscape photohgraphy, because i felt it wasn’t shown as much as them i wanted to give it a good go to try and get it showcased more.

The amount of people that do paint just for the fun of painting and the practice, most normal people with normal jobs, such as lawyers, building surveyors. So it shows anyone can do it, with a bit of practice, anyone can do it changes the way people see it, if they were to ask what jobs the people doing it may change people’s opinions of graffiti artists.

So the photography side of things, i believe it could lead to a lot of things, such as documentaries about graffiti, doing your own stuff and filming it, there is a lot of ways to go down the type of graffiti that are all different, so you could do all different aspects of graffiti to shape the photography side of things and make changes to people’s opinions when it comes to graffiti and the artists. Because normal people can do it, but people think it is just vandalists who do it but they never ask so they just assume that it is people who want to break the law who do graffiti.

Using Padlet to get words which relate to my work

We were given a task in one of our lectures where each one of us had to show a couple of pieces of our favourite work that we had produced, the class then had to describe what these pieces were like, by using a list of words we were given to choose from, so the main words i got were video game, colour, artistic etc. just a few examples of what words the work i showed made people think of.

Artist Research – Tom Bob

Tom Bob is a New York based ‘Graffiti’ artist where he finds industrial objects that look boring and reimagines them, to look funky and fun to look at compared to just looking like a random pipe. There is more information on this website about Tom Bob’s work:

https://interestingengineering.com/nyc-artist-transforms-the-everyday-objects-into-incredible-art

Some of his work i think is really quirky and interesting and find it really cool to look at and i think it would even make it fun for kids to look at and makes the place look more quirky and fun rather than just boring and uninteresting.

Artist Research – Bordalo II

He is an artist who was born in Lisbon in 1987, he believes he belongs to a generation that is extremely consumerist, materialist and greedy. With the production of things at its highest, the production of “waste” and unused objects is also at its highest. “Waste” is quoted because of its abstract definition: “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. I create, recreate, assemble and develop ideas with end-of-life material and try to relate it to sustainability, ecological and social awareness.

Link = http://www.bordaloii.com/about

He likes to use waste and makes the waste he finds into incredible shapes and sprays them to make it look 3d and all realistic he makes mostly animals out of the scrap that he finds because it makes an interesting piece if you use animals as a base to work on.

The bottom image I have added is his tag that he would use and it is also his header image on his website so he kind of sees himself as a graffiti artist in a way because the tag is a common graffiti tag in my opinion.

I can link Bordalo II to my own work as he finds domestic and industrial objects to spray on and that in a way is also linked to my work as that is what i have been experimenting with, which is spraying on old domestic objects that I could find lying around.

Graffiti Festivals research

There are a few famous graffiti/street art festivals, there would normally be a various amount of them a year, in various different countries. One of the big ones is called Meeting of Styles, which happens in London between the 26 and 28th May, it takes place in Shoreditch, the epicentre of London’s street art scene.

This is definitely one of the main ones I would probably consider going to as it is in London, and it looks like one of the best ways to show graffiti art, and see artists who are showcasing there work in a massive way, so if i can ever make it there i would happily go as it looks like a massive appreciation of the art.

They are showcased all around the world in places such as Spain, Stockholm, Denmark, Croatia etc, some of the art that has been showcased in these places is amazing and i wish i could get the chance to go and see it eventually, but sometimes its just the thought about the work that might make you excited, compared to the actual country you could be travelling to.

 

Spray Painting Domestic Objects

So I started spray painting random old objects that I found in the house as i thought it would make for quite an interesting change and maybe a different way of seeing graffiti because of how graffiti is normally perceived, where it is normally done on side of a building or a random wall, compared to it being done on mirrors, doors, fridges, etc.

So I decided to see what i could do with these certain objects like the mirrors, door, fridge just to see what it would look like and maybe if it would change anyone’s opinion on the subject of graffiti and maybe they’d see it in a different light, comapred to most people seeing it as vandalism, when i think it should be seen as an art and not vandalism, as the wall is a graffiti artists canvas.

As you can see in the video its me spraying these certain objects that i have been talking about and this is how a couple of them turned out, not exactly how i wanted them to but its more practice than anything else for me really, because i’m experimenting more than actually producing at the moment.

Spray Paint Film

This film is a short video I made of me tagging my nickname on an old door that I found and decided to film it and see how it would turn out and to see what the eventual outcome was of me doing the tag of something I was copying from my sketchbook that I had drawn previously to doing this piece, as I thought it would be easier to copy from something than do something completely from scratch and then try and wing it with accents and highlights etc.

The following couple of shots are some shots of the finished project of me spray painting my ‘tag’ on the old door that I found as the video ends quite abruptly before I had added the highlights and the accents to the grafitti.

Specialist Study Presentation

This first presentation is for my specialist study, this is for the brief for specialist study where I talk about, where I want to go in my photography, basing it more on urban and graffiti photography compared to doing just portraits or landscapes, as I think that it makes it a lot more interesting and its a background that a lot of people haven’t really gone down in the photography route on a substancial kind of level.

I based my specialist study on this because this is the type of photography that I really enjoy and feel as though I can express myself through this type of photography compared to any other type of photography, so I like to make all different angles when it comes to mass graffiti to add as much of it in the photo as I can.

Specialist Study Draft Presentation

Sound Task Instrumental Test

This is a short piece that I was given as a task to do where i had to pick an instrumental of a song and try to identify what sounds i could hear throughout the instrumental, and make words from these sounds and try and make a graphic with them, if i had been able to go with the idea i wanted to it would of worked very well, but it seemed very difficult to do and the way i did it wouldn’t of really tied in together with what i tried to do.

this one also didn’t really work, so i’m going to try a different instrumental to see if it would work at all. the instrumental i’m going to use is skepta, nasty as i believe it might work better and i can make a better video by using my own graphics using graffiti and try and film it and put it together.

Idea for specialist study

One idea I have for specialist study is to create my own graffiti by buying some cheap canvas and spray paint. I will then photoshop my results onto random walls to make it look like graffiti. To make it look more realistic, I will change the aspect ratio and add shadows and depth to them.

I have been researching different types of graffiti and tried to practice drawing my own pieces as a type of experiment. Initially, I have used pens and paper to practice different designs. I will then progress to a spray can and use marker pens which has the same effect as spray paint but in a pen form. Thus, it’s a lot easier to use if you are just starting.

I have also researched why people choose graffiti as an art form as opposed to just marking a random wall without an objective. People do it to show off what they can do, it’s  also a way of showing off their work without having to pay to put it in a gallery. For instance, Banksy stencils his art work anywhere but he always works at night so you never see him.

Graffiti is a very mischievious form of art because of how it appears on walls in the middle of the night. Graffiti is almost always created at night compared to in the daytime unless there is a place where it is legal to paint. Tagging places with their alias is illegal so people try and do it when they cannot be seen. They want to tag but want to remain anonymous. They don’t want people to know who they are and who tagged what.