artist statement

For this project I want to revisit a project I had already worked on during my foundation year, The project was originally based around the idea of me telling people about my illness, which at the time had massively affected my time on the course due to missing the majority of the first half of the year to recovering from cancer then spending the rest of the year recovering from anxiety and depression that hit me as a result of being physically ill. This project suddenly got rather huge and I realised there was so much more to what I could explore in the project but time restraints meant I was only able to explore a relatively small proportion of the issue. I have since felt that the project has been left relatively unfinished, so in my exhibition module I have decided to revisit this project with some distance from the illness and with some more intentions throughout the project so wouldn't be as overwhelmed by the whole subject area.

Within the foundation project I quickly realised this type of work seemed rather effective using film and I wanted to continue to use video and film to get across the message, feelings and emotions. I was aware that this project was very much able to turn cheesy very quickly so I needed to be aware of that throughout the project.

I also found within my foundation project that the environment you show the video piece in is equally important so should be thought about also, I looked at artist such as Loure Prouvost who installs her video work into an environment she makes within the gallery which is very effective at becoming overwhelming.

I rethought about my experience at the turner prize and how the work of Tris Vonna Michel was very effective as his voice was very effective at keeping attention but in some ways you had no idea what he was saying but you still paid attention.

I looked at the documentaries by Adam Curtis which made me think I wanted to take this down a factual line and make it matter of fact.

While working on the 2 pieces of work I have been learning that the difference between anxiety the illness and anxiety the emotion is very confusing. Through interviewing people I found that there was no lines keeping them separate and they very much interlink. I think the 2 pieces show this as the video piece looks at the emotion of anxiety from the point of view of those who don’t necessarily have the mental illness but then the audio is very much looking at the irrational thinking of the illness.