painting: GCSE mock exam (2000)

[helenic]

On Friday I asked my parents to bring up one of my school art folders so I could start scanning my old projects. Unfortunately the folder they chose contained very little - mostly materials for screen printing, test prints, laminates, various computer print outs of text bases. However, it did have a couple of nice pieces, including the official school photo of my GCSE art mock exam, which was used as the cover of the school magazine that year. The title (which is always set by the exam board, to be interpreted as you please) was something tepid like "decoration" or "embellishment". I decided to use Klimt's technique of continuing the patterning on the garments of his women into the background of his paintings, only applying it to Maori traditional tattoos and carvings (I think I got the Maori theme from having recently re-read The Bone People by Keri Hulme, one of my all-time favourite novels). This resulted in something approaching a six month obsession with ancient Maori art and their tribal tattoos and motifs - partly, I suspect, because of the bloodiness of the initiation process, the tattoos chipped into the face with flint and dye, an up to three day long rite of passage in which the pain and sleeplessness under the stars was used to trigger a trance state.

(click for enlarged version)
January 2000, produced in 20 hours for GCSE mock exam.
tempura block on two pieces of sugar paper.
approx 13 x 28"

(Yes, I'm afraid that you can look forward to seeing lots of old artwork over the next few weeks. I have to have some thread of who-I-really-am to cling to in the midst of the forthcoming sea of revision.)

Comments

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

That's pretty cool.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I've always had a soft spot for it.

[liriselei.livejournal.com]

cool ! i particularly like the expressive impassiveness of the face framed by the arm in the top right.

is it just me, or does the guy down at the base of the picture look like he's just given birth to the small white eyed orange creature between his legs ?

i feel that our society would be much improved by more in the way of ritualised initiation processes (other than the current inadequate ones contained in the school system).

[libellum.livejournal.com]

yes. Yes, he does look like he's given birth. I didn't realise until afterwards. Ne'er mind :)

ifimust has some interesting things to say on modern liminal rituals here (http://goatncandle.freeservers.com/apr04/diotima.htm). The ones conventional to society aren't always as distasteful as things like the stag/hen night - and even that often has a self-consciousness to it, and the juxtaposition of self-examination and intimate (albeit drunken) truth-telling with performative self-presentation, that could be compared to the the symposium or komos. We do have initiation rituals and they're often very powerful; what our culture lacks is a universal self-awareness of their nature and purpose...