Planner & Tracking Occupation vs Liberation
INITIAL IDEAS AND DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONAL INVESTIGATION
From my mind map I wanted to explore further in depth the idea of investigating Occupation Vs Liberation, to see where it could take me and enable me to represent and portray something personal and something that I would be able to develop and grow ideas off. However I decided to branch away from the idea of Occupation as it would limit me in aspect of having to concentrate on the Jersey island itself, as well as this factor the Occupation of Jersey is already an area that I have deeply explored and investigated in previous work. Therefore, I wanted to take this opportunity to try something different and possibly an area that i had a great passion for which would allow me to satisfy my fascination for the topic itself.
From this first mind map and mood board, it has allowed me to begin to grasp my initial ideas and have a concept of where I want to go with the project in the future linking to the final outcomes. For this project I have decided to look closer to my dance background and placing it with the idea of feeling liberated through dancing and further connotation that may come along with this aspect. This is a topic that hugely interests me as it is a huge part of my life and a big commitment. As well as dancing myself since a young age, I have an even bigger love of watching it and seeing the development and movement of individual dancers, following there careers, to me this adds inspiration and motivations. For this project I have decided to project my enthusiasm and liberation of dance through other dancers history, background, love and other factors that I might find along the way. Furthermore, I will use archival photos from each individuals dance albums and that shows images from when they were younger to help project the journey they have gone through to where they are now in their dancing history. Finally, I will discover the deeper meaning and feeling that presents dancers on a daily and the concept of what dance means to them, this will allow me to look closely at the conceptual and contextual aspects of the individual and the liberation of dance.
Statement of intent
For my personal study I will be exploring family and the relationships I have with the ones who I live with in Jersey and the ones who live in London, who include my parents and younger brothers. I originally lived in London until last year so my relationships have changed over the time I have been here, so I believe this would be a good topic for me to look into. Since most of my family live in London, there is some sort of disconnection between us as we don’t see each other as much as we did before, and the family who I live with in Jersey have closer relationships with me since I have moved over. Although Jersey is similar to the UK, it was still quite difficult getting used to the new areas and starting fresh at a new school, and my family in both London and Jersey were here to help me with that. During the occupation, family would have been the only thing the people of Jersey would have really had close to them, and they were still somehow able to connect with their loved ones who lived outside of the island even though communications were extremely limited.
I am planning to take 2 photo shoots before Christmas break and 2 during Christmas break, with three of them being in Jersey and one being in London. I’d like to take a look at my family in London and Jersey, and take images of them as they would be naturally in their daily lives to compare the differences of lives and relationships between the two.
Statement of intent
For my Personal Investigation, I want to focus on my mobile family life and how this lifestyle has effected me as an individual. I will explore how living in different countries has allowed me to gain cultural knowledge, new experiences and memories. It has ultimately shaped who I am and how I perceive the world. Through childhood images, I want to highlight how grateful I am for the adventures I have had with my family and how they have encouraged me to continue traveling and exploring. The reason for this constant movement is because of my dad. His job as a teacher doesn’t involve travelling, however his boredom has urged him to live in different places with me and my mum.
For my photo-book to have a narrative, I will tell the story of how my mother and father met and fell in love in Peru. Since my father is a geography teacher, he takes the opportunity to go travelling whenever he can. Through applying to jobs in different countries, he ended up in Peru which is where he met my mother Isabel. I will present their love story through archival images and display highlights such as first moments together, the wedding day and when I was born. Afterwards, I want to explore my mixed identity and the different cultures I have been exposed to during childhood.
As the plan above explains, the narrative will start with archival images of my father and mother and their first encounters together as a couple. The middle section will contain archival images after I was born. It will be in chronological order and show how we moved from one country to another: Peru, Singapore, Austria, Thailand, Germany, Gran Canaria, England and Jersey. The final section could include digital photo-montages of self portraits to explore my current identity.
Project mind map
This mind map shows in a very general view, of how fashion and clothing affects our lives and essentially creates loops of high and low confidence and status, which feed themselves and are difficult to get out of. It also touches on social media and how it promotes potentially unnecessary clothes buying habits, and an artificial need to have nicer clothes to get more likes and attention.
PERSONAL tracking sheet
ESSAY QUESTIONS
How has Darren Harvey-Regan explored modernism and abstraction in ‘The Erratics’?
Can abstraction of landscapes be used to tell the story of forced laborers in WWII?
How does the work of Darren Harvey-Regan explore abstraction as an intention and process?
Invisible Hands – Exhibition
Invisible Hands is an art exhibition which is a collaborative project between artist Alicja Rogalska and The Morning Boat in order to showcase life as a migrant worker. The exhibition is located at Jersey Art Centre in the Berni Gallery, and aims to inform viewers of the poor conditions these migrant workers are put through and how little they gain back, in terms of pay, housing and food. This topic is highly relevant as it has been a massive part of the Island’s agriculture for over 150 years, but still is an area which has not been explored or documented.
The Agri-Care Prize was created while interviewing the migrant about their working conditions and lives. The interviews were informal as they created clay potatoes to act as a symbolic representation for all migrant workers, whilst creating this they talked about what made a star worker and made a list of criteria as to how to decide who gets the prize of the potato. This is a highly important aspect of this exhibition as it reinforces how the migrant workers are forgotten about and not talked about much, reinforcing the theme of neglect. This set of rules and background is shown below, alongside the prize potato.
As mentioned before the migrant workers were interviewed, and this was put into a video, and was projected onto the wall. Within this video we watch these migrant workers told and create their potato out of clay with the audio of the migrant workers explaining the working conditions being played on top of this. One key element of the video is that no faces are shown, allowing the migrant workers to remain anonymous allowing them to express the issues and their personal opinion, reinforcing the title of ‘Invisible Hands’
The imagery of the exhibition was all captured by the migrant workers themselves in order to accurately represent their lifestyle and working conditions. This is showcased as many images are poor quality and show poor framing techniques which makes the images authentic and allows us to truly understand the conditions that they are in. All images were enlarged and framed and displayed on the wall. After looking at some imagery one key thing that stood out was that all imagery with the subject being people, the people all seemed happy and got on with their job and life as they don’t know any better emphasising this pejorative issue within the Channel Islands.
Personally, I believe this exhibition really illustrates how bad these migrant workers get it, allowing me as a viewer truly understand their working and living conditions. The work hold strong conceptual and contextual representations which makes the imagery and overall exhibition powerful in illustrating political and social issues, suggesting our government is corrupt. The authentic and naturalistic/documentary photographs produced really emphasised how real this issue is, exposing me to the issue and feeling a sense of sympathy and makes me want to help these migrant workers. The use of imagery and media has allowed me to gain further understanding of the concept and context, which has allowed me to consider using these techniques to showcase my concept and context within my personal study.
Personal investigation- STATEMENT of intent
For my Personal investigation I will be focusing on my grandparents and the relationship that they had and how it developed and bloomed through and during the occupation of the island. They knew each other for years and they made their relationship official on liberation day.
I will be using a mixture of images, some being ones that I will get from archives both family and public, some images within the book will be ones that I have made and set up from stories that are in the book, they will be tableaux images that i have set up with two people in them representing both of my grandparents. They will be set up in places that they met.
