In A State of Constant Flux

Flux...

Digital manipulation, 2014

In the West we have an unquenchable desire for new and exciting products to buy.  Creators of consumer goodies often look to other cultures for ideas that are new and exotic.  However, the problem with this is that the original cultural meaning is skewed and distorted in order to make it fit our market's needs. 

Retrieved from Pixabay

To its original creator the myth of Cupid and Psyche had important social and cultural meanings.  The idea of the classically beautiful star crossed lovers and their struggle to unite appeals greatly to us. 

For some reason the figure of Psyche has been dropped by consumer culture, despite our love of using the female body to market and sell a multitude of products.  The West has taken the figure of Cupid and turned him into a heavily stylised  cherub.

The Desolation of Cupid explores the journey of Cupid from his original purpose and form to what we now understand as being Cupid.

The artwork above is from Desolation of Cupid and attempts to describe the transformation process that occurs when Western consumer culture turns the meaningful into the consumable.  Cupid has become no more than a dumbed down icon that producers assign to products in order to entice us to buy.

Figure stock by Felix d'Eon

Texture by Arkano3

Any copyrighted material used on this blog remains the property of the original owner and is used under the Fir Dealing Australia Act for the purpose of critique and review.

Eradicating Psyche

The Lost Psyche

 

Katelyn Parker, 2014

Part of my objective for this first thread of the body of work is to describe some of the interaction that takes place between the central characters of the myth.  This exploration of human weakness and faility is missing from our contemporary understandings of Cupid as consumer culture has sanitised and simplified the text.

In the image here I wanted to describe the intimate physical contact between Cupid and Psyche.  The physical touch between the two lovers that the viewer is able to interpret and relate to.  For the viewer I believe this puts the myth on a very human level.  This enable the viewer to connect more fully and emotionally to the loss of the meaning of the cultural text.  I have used images from the public domain as I believe they have an oldness that speaks to the age of the myth.

Bringing the old photographs into the contemporary while at the same time retaining the old quality that I was originally attracted to needed a very sensitive and subtle approach.  I thought about what has changed in the way that artists make art, since the Renaissance to now, and the answer lay in the greatest game changer of all time.  THE INTERNET and the online creative community.  As technology has become cheaper and the online Collective Intelligence grows and grows, artists are able to collaborate to create artworks that just ten years ago would have been impossible.  I have sourced textures created by artists who specialise in them to include in my final artworks.  By doing this the antiquity of the figure stock is retained but the final images are able to sit comfortably in a contemporary forum.

Figure stock is from the public domain retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

Textures by  NinjaRabbit-Stock

Silenced

Katelyn Parker, 2014

Using images from the Public Domain is crucial to the success of this first thread for my final body of work.  By doing this I hope that I am drawing the viewer into the historical representation of Cupid.  In the image above I am attempting to connect to the historical but begin to connect the viewer into the contemporary part of my work.  The approaches I am employing at this stage rely on Grotesque principles, or applying a slight psychological shock to the work.  Cupid's mouth being covered with a bloodied bandage speaks to the silencing of the original meanings and purposes for the myth.  Once used to teach a civilisation moral and ethical lessons, the myth now is attached mindlessly and carelessly to commodities.

The ultimate aim of this thread is to position the myth historically and to begin to describe the erosion of meaning.  The theme of erosion is one that will carry through the body of work to the final thread, The desolation of Cupid.

Figure stock is from Wikimedia Commons, all other stock is my own.
Textures by NinjaRabbit-Stock

The Consuming West

Katelyn Parker
Mixed media digital painting, 2014

As governments in the West begin to tighten purse strings and to stimulate growth in their economies times have become tight for all.  The consumer economy responds by increasing the pressure on individuals to continue to buy, buy, BUY.

Advertisers find even more devious methods of intensifying our desire for the latest products. The pressure to buy is intense, and constant.

Are consumers victims of consumer culture?

Or are we villains?

Although we know that an increasing amount of goods are made using slave/child labour, we seem to be able to navigate our way around the ethics and morality issues and continue to buy from companies that have been exposed as employing slavery to increase their profit margins.  Our complicity in the continuation of slave labour makes it difficult to position consumers as victims of consumer culture.  The real victims continue to be those that suffer working in unsafe and often brutal working conditions in order to satisfy the west's appetite for new things to buy.  This digital artwork came about after doing research into practices of slavery that exist today.  The stories and videos I have read and seen tell of kidnappings, routine brutal beatings, withholding of pay and identity documents and other abuses that largely go untouched by mainstream news outlets.  The artwork above was a response to the vulnerability of a group of individuals that have absolutely no power to change their position in life.  

At least consumers have choice, we do not have to buy.  This makes it difficult to position consumers as victims of consumer culture.  However I don't know that it makes us villains either.  

Unless otherwise stated all images have been sourced from Wikimedia Commons and have been assigned a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License or are from the Public Domain
All of my artworks unless otherwise stated are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license (Version 4.0 (international licence)

Boxed up by consumerism

Just recently, several times in the same week, I came across businesses and TV shows that were using a Native American Chief's head dress in ways that deeply offended the original owner's cultural beliefs.  All of the instances displayed incredible arrogance and insensitivity to the Native American community.  In one of the cases a very successful Australian photography business that offer the customer a complete package of hair, make up, costume and a final portrait were using the head dress as a ill considered prop.  In the sample portrait on their website the head dress was being worn by a young, white female.  Our consumer culture is so very often guilty of insensitivities such as this.  The piece of art work above was created shortly after seeing the portrait of the young woman and reflects on the way that consumerism strips away original meaning and packages it up in a way that suits its own market driven needs.

Unless otherwise stated all images have been sourced from Wikimedia Commons and have been assigned a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License or are from the Public Domain
All of my artworks unless otherwise stated are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license (Version 4.0 (international licence)

Art, Manipulation and Reproduction

Katelyn Parker
Digital painting
2014

Technology has changed the way that we do things in so many aspects of our lives and art is no different.  The once very privileged domain of Fine Arts has been democratised by user friendly software and the internet.  Anyone can be an artist now and exhibit their work in a global gallery.

But what has this done to the way we value the art image?

 Art in the age of Photoshop and social media

Access to the internet and image editing software has made creating and exhibiting art available to more people than ever before.  We do not have to invest thousands of dollars in a Fine Arts education as we can now access tutorials online for free.  We have greater access to source or reference images through websites like Wikimedia commons.  Online galleries of images that are free to use, re-mix and share has meant that we are able to collaborate like never before.  Free to use image editing software such as Gimp means that money is no longer a barrier or obstacle to creating effective and professional images to communicate our ideas.  Digital files can be reproduced again  and again, perfectly and faithfully every time, at just a click of a mouse.  The internet is changing the ways that artists are building followings and exhibiting the art works.  Social media and file-sharing sites like Deviantart make it possible, and free, to reach a global audience.

The boundaries between Fine Art/high end culture and popular culture have become blurred and unstable.  Because of the technological advances a greater number of people are able to produce art and due to the lower cost of reproduction of digital files a greater number of people are able to buy art.

Unless otherwise stated all images have been sourced from Wikimedia Commons and have been assigned a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License or are from the Public Domain
All of my artworks unless otherwise stated are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license (Version 4.0 (international licence)