Kevin Bauman

Those four photos were from my little photo shoot over at Leavesden mental hospital on the 22nd October 2011, all taken with a Nikon D3000. I took two of my friends on the 40 minute walk from my house over to the place where my mother once lived with her family (not as patients, but as both my grandparents worked there for a period of time), and where people went when they lost their minds. It's an incredibly sad place to walk around, and the scenery has completely changed, what was once a reception and a few main wards have become flats and what was once a dining area has been completely knocked down and a park was built in its place, the only things still standing either serving their purpose or left unchanged is the barn and sewage plant, the cemetery, the house at the end of the grounds and the chapel. The chapel doesn't really concern me much, it's not weathered or worn or tired, it stands as it was, completely unchanged, as if it'll stand there forever, whereas the barn & plant, the cemetery and ground house are abandoned and have been for many years, without much care or attention, though the plant was bought by a Shane Anthony Lanigan, in hopes of using it for something, but never did. I find the emptiness of the place eerie, never mind the knowledge that it once housed people with dire thoughts and vivid hallucinations. 

I've always been a fan of abandoned places, it's always been the wonder of why that does it for me, the fact that they stand so weak looking now, but so so strong. I would like to think they reflect me, maybe.

Kevin Bauman did the set 100 abandoned houses and photographed around his hometown, Detroit. He did it to show how awful Detroit had become, with it's constant lack of people to occupy the space, but the fact is, sadly, that all abandoned places only light an emotion in someone that has been destroyed by something themselves, by a person or place or feeling. People that have been down but not destroyed simply can't see the same impact, which is actually incredibly frightful, but you can't fight that in a person, you have to allow them to believe it's a useless space till they can feel the same thing.

It's difficult, but they'll come around.

I also find the fact that all the photos are face on, it's almost horrifying, as if it's staring you down, and trying to merge itself with you to rekindle the dying emotion that we suppress all our lives.
We've all been abandoned.
I simply can't understand that someone could not see the pain in these pictures, they may not understand them, but there is an overwhelming attack of pain and partial panic in these, and I think that's what I actually like about them.

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Abandonment and loss (AS work)

I find there's a sort of universal feeling of abandonment with everybody now, no matter where you go, or who you talk to, or what you believe, there's a sense of abandonment or loss with everyone.
Last year during Photography AS I pretty much continually showed all this loss and hurt in my work, and molded my work around the thoughts and feelings of the abandoned mind, as it were.

"The mediation between expectation and thought"

Taken with a Fujifilm Finepix s5800 this year.

Chris Martin-Taylor in Watford town center.

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"The worst abuser"

14 prints out of 78 cigarette packets I photographed.

I asked a numerous amount of people to either write on a packet or give me something to write on them,

I kept 8 of my favorite's ranging from "I miss my old life" to "I want to die" but my personal number one is the green Mayfair Menthol 10s packet with "it's OK" written on.

These were both finals for last years AS, and were very much influenced by my prior diary's, the people around me and my own thoughts and emotions; both were titled by the first line of two diary's.
It's something that's said regularly, by regular people, but really, I have actually suffered a lot of loss, and a lot of hurt has come from that, and the sort of loss I've dealt with is something that doesn't leave you, it instead leaves you with emotion that drowns you very quickly unless you find something to force it at, to hope it leaves you. I showed going through loss alone in "the mediation between expectation and thought" through showing complete loneliness in a seemingly busy place, and how when you really burst out of that place, there's no real relief, you must carry on going, despite the fact you feel you've dealt with whatever is killing you, and in "The worst abuser" I showed collective loss, how everybody feels abandoned by something, but really, it's all the same thing. It started off as a show on addiction, how we're all addicted to something, be it beauty, weight, cigarettes, drugs, food.... anything, yet it's all very similar. I found throughout setting up, though, that people tended to feel really possessive over the packet that held their quote, as if they were trying to hold on to whatever was hurting, rather than let it hurt them again, and I quickly changed my plan to loss.

Stephen Gill

This is Stephen Gills 'Outside In', a series I once saw down in Brighton, infact, I saw last November, in Brighton.
Each photo in the Outside In series is essentially a photograph with a place, with bits of plant life, rubbish found on the floor, seeds, grass, and even insects on the film. The object sits on the film emulsion when he's taking the picture. Its a perfect way of actually combining a place with the essence of that place. It shows how people live, the visual noise they have around them and the complete choas that that entails.
We so often live without really stopping to look at how and where we live, how people are, what surroundings we have and how that actually affects us, and our lives.
Gill used this method to show that we dont really know or stop to think of any of this till we process the film of our lives, we don't know where our emotions (the objects) will sit or fall, and we live half blind of who we are.
Similarly, if you were to create a photogram (placing objects onto a piece of darkoom (light sensitive) paper, shining a light, and then developing the paper, leaving a white 'shadow' of the object) you would have a similar result, you don't know what you're going to get, or how the objects come together if they're just a white shadow. You could even use a negative to provide a sort of background, as I have done in the past, or, if your only option is digital, getting a photograph and placing white cut outs of an image onto the photograph, then photographing that photograph and editing it till it looks like its come straight from a darkroom. You can manipulate the way you see things, and the way we view things so easily, yet we never choose to do it.

Outside In is very close to me as I'm so very interested in other peoples minds, how they percieve things, the ideas they have and the way they view their lives, everyone has this different interpretation of life, but we all live together without sharing this interpretation.
I've used Gills work to inspire a project i did last year, where i picked up one thing each day, created a collection and photographed it. By using slices of other peoples lives that they'd discarded on the street, I managed to show how close as people we are, but how much we discard each other, and how much of our lives we choose to ignore.

When Gill showed his work, he put in the center all the things he'd collected, which is exactly what I did when it came to my exhibition, and I find it shows alot about the processes of life and the things we are, the things we take, the things we discard, the things that make us up.

I think everyone can find a little slice of themselves in Outside In, and if you can't, you simply aren't looking hard enough.


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Showing a semi Godly being via art.

(from MGMT's Kids video, which is awesome, by the way)

Ok, so maybe MGMT aren't exactly the greatest thing to start off with when I'm trying to some sort of God, but it's where this starts off so... yeah. deal with it.

At the end of the 'Kids' video a cartoon version of the singer picks up a frightened child as if to nurse it, but then merges into monsters and kills it, which is an interesting point when he starts off looking pretty much like a saviour of the scared, I mean, who wants to be known as the being that took in then killed some vunerable child? apparently MGMT like that as their image, but it's a very interesting grasp on child behaviours and a godly being.

Religion is something that confuses me to some extent, I like a slice of proof when I believe in something, and as lovely as religion may be, it's very changeable and strange, theres no definitive point that starts off, and nothing that can be proved, and therefore, as this gives me such an interest, I'm trying to paint, draw, photograph, sew, build (...etc) a semi Godly being.

MGMT's ending of the Kids video interests me on that part, I sort of want whatever I make to be so changeable and obsure, something that is different to everyone that comes across and views it, much like religion and religious imagery, I'm not so much a fan of stereotypical religious art, it's very difinitive and everything is very much the same, and it's a barrier I want to break down and explain, through art, that it's different to different people.
Cathedral Stairway, F. G. James (London) - 1954 (a photogram very difficult to obtain a digital image of), shows two people huddled on a step leading up to what is apparently a cathedral, though you only can see a large cross above them, I suppose in a way, F.G. James was looking for a way to show that religion is higher than people, yet together, people can converse and change the idea of the ongoing battle, what is better, God or man?
F. G. James & MGMT clearly had similar ideas here, how changeable religion can be, and how differently people can grow attached or away from it. F.G. James was moreso showing how we change our concepts of which is better whereas MGMT showed that God & Man must be similar, we both have goodness in us, but lets be fair, really, we're all angry and tired, to create the best visualisation of God, I must take both of these into account, but I first have to find a way how.

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Wen Wu

This is Wen Wu's "venus as a boy", a painting that, by all standards, is massive.

It seems to deal with alot of issues in itself, maybe moreso the concept of sexuality and identity, the idea that everyone can be this beautiful figure, an easily changeable figure, and fit it perfectly is something that isn't always explored that far in art, or at the very least, it wasn't.

I believe the flowers around the body shows alot about who you're supposed to be rather than the person you really are, but how we can completely break that, and stand in front of it with such a stance, it's fairly obvious that we just don't care, or at least, venus doesn't, which is a fairly anthony micallef sort of thing. Wen Wu and Anthony Micallef both look into what society finds acceptable, but who we are in comparison to that, which, as you may be able to tell, is something I'm interested in.

In all events, thats all i really have to say about 'Venus as a boy' but there may be more on her work, if I find a sudden new context to me. lets hope I do.

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Anthony Micallef

Anthony micallef's 'The ascent' is possibly my favourite out of all of his work (the "in heels I feel closer to God" painting), but that's probably just because it was the first one I saw, I found it in a little unknown art book called "the outsiders" that I found lying around in a charity shop. I suppose it speaks to me in a sense too, I mean, just how can we justify our actions when we act how we do? we can say we're good people, religious, charitable, anything else, but really, we're nasty. We drink, smoke, have sex with little reason, for a few minutes we feel it's what we want, but really we know it's wrong, but as a society, we pretend to frown upon it, but continue to to do so... maybe that's what the work is about... showing up society.

I love micallef's work for two main reasons, 1. it actually says something, has a message and can be understood, 2. it's made so beautifully. It's something I want to do throughout my course, but it's hard to recreate, or restyle while still leaving a resemblance to his work, but I wholly believe it would look amazing if instead of painted, it was sown, sort of like tilleke schwarz work, but with more meaning to it.

(tilleke schwarz)

literally, the work is so versatile that you can basically transform it to any media; a 3d version could easily be achieved from some of the work, same as a photographical or graphical version, maybe even using a Gillian wearing's 'signs' or 'postsecret' style you could achieve a similar result, some bit of art with context and meaning, something that shows society how it is, not how it wants to be, shows peoples fears, hopes, dreams, emotions, something strangely beautiful in some horrifying way.

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The obsessive record

Hi, I'm 17, live in Herts, England, and I like art.
It is all my intention to show my art works and artists I find influential on this blog, for myself, or others.
Enjoy.

- this is a photograph of the back of my college.
taken with a Nikon d60.

see?
work.


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