FInal my Evaluation....

Evaluation

This is Evaluation is for Unit 11 (final project) and this based on the theme/task on ‘self identity’. For this project I came up with some ideas and looked at some artists who have exceptionally inspired me on what I have done so far along in the project. I had a number of ideas about the project. As I thought of the genre I had to come up with something that will hint out on ‘Who I am’. Self-identity to me it means the individuality of a person and how they express it, to people so they can get an image on ‘who they really are’ .As-well as the over view of the person as why they are like that i.e. what I can say on how they might be from their work. As having a dark scary portrait the attitudes that come across straight away is; the person ma be really dark, likes horror and feel nothing towards ‘pain’. However looking in that portrait in detail the ideas jump in on that person would have been a happy but now is isolated or expressing the other ‘side’ of themselves.

I came up with couple of ideas on self-identity. The mind map which I did, gave a clear choice and guidance as what I would do in my final project. There are many different topics/idea as for me that I chose however what struck me was culture and being a foreigner in the UK. I thought Aliens. Aliens with a twist of my Culture the combination between them. My culture and the fascinating cultural background with other people showing that all of us are the same being human as we are all human and not aliens or avatar among ourselves. Aliens and my Culture that was an odd combination however I thought to be unique and express who I am by a sculpture or a simple painting. The culture that I chose is African due to being an African Asian person; it will symbolise/ hint out on ‘self-identity’. My interest in my Culture Aliens is to show who I am; as my "Self Identity" also this shows my influences to what artist have influenced me and what can I show for my own Identity to my interest and my influences.

African Alien, The Alien from the start I had thought of making a sculpture and the African art has inspired me as the African art is mainly to do with detail and mask. Most of the African art the images show a specific detail as to differentiate different community. As these are shown by patterns from animals i.e.; snakes for their scaly pattern.

The artist who I first looked at was Yinka Shonibare; I have explored an Artist who has gone back to his Culture to show his feelings and his roots of where he has come from.

has given me an inspiration as what I have done for my final piece. For my final piece i have chosen two different topics that express me and that is "Aliens" and my "Culture" which is African and Asian Culture. I am fascinated with Aliens as I am "Agnostic" they exist or not. Aliens is a topic that makes me think of the "outer world" and I enjoy looking at Aliens and their features and I find interesting looking at them and how they ‘are’ meaning what they do and what are their features they have. This fantasy of Aliens which I am explored shows my interest. I added my Culture "African" to express my own roots and on my  "Aliens" as making them unique and to show my identity by making them in every emotions that relates to me and to show who I am.

Yinka Shonibare- African Artist; He Is into Alien and he has blended the African Culture and Aliens which he has sculpt. His inspiration was the history and culture or Africa as he also used politics to make his work unique



Some of the Unique Aliens with Yinka Shonibare has sculpted. He sculpted the aliens to show the difference ‘objective’ in world. He shows the aliens as united together like a family and people meeting new people, I personally think that he has done this to give message on everyone should get together and there should be peace. In a way I could be wrong. In the sculpture I find that his work has inspired me on the bases of traditional African clothing and patterns. As well as symbolising him self. He doesn’t use world in his art, however the sculpture show a real life movement i.e. the first image is showing aliens in a place then like an alien family exploring.

 

 The traditional African pattern as show and the colours are bright and the patterns of animals to identify the different groups in Africa.

The second artist who I explored and has inspired me is Mariko Mori with my theme of Alien and culture is Mariko Mori. She is Japanese artists who juxtapose her work with culture and Eastern mythology with Western culture is a common theme in her work. This is the reason why she has inspired me because of mixing the culture into her work and the fascination life art alien she made and other aliens she sculpted. This fitted with my theme and what I was going to do with my art work. She did a 3-D projection  to create futuristic art with a alien influence. Mori's 2003 installation at Deitch Projects was Oneness, a project held in conjunction with the Public Art Fund’s installation of her Wave UFO project. It is a symbol of the acceptance of otherness and a model for overcoming national and cultural borders.(Her work in the theme of Aliens.. she has mixed up unique technique of sculpting her Aliens.... as well as making them attractive in the sense of they "stand-out".....)

These images show the interpretation of her work in Aliens. As the 3^rd image shows the alien come to life. All of these images influenced my work by making it constant to my theme and real life like.

I interpreted Shonibare and Mori work, by making it unique and using some of their ideas as I used the idea of culture from both of the artist but the main artist who I looked at and saw comparison is Shonibare who used African culture to show who he is. Also Mori gave me inspiration on what my final project was supposed to be as I took the fascinating idea of 3D live art. However mine is not real-life live African Alien. My final thought was to make half African alien face and half human to show the difference in the patterns and who I am. However in the end the result should be the same as the sculpture shows the only person who it is; is me.

I started of in planning on how I was supposed to be making the aliens;

   I sketched out on how it will look if it was 3D, so I have a guidance in making the sculpture,

I drew out the face and added the detail ( I interpreted crocodile scales- as they are one of the African reptiles). The reason I did this, was to see what patterns will suite my alien. I also did other patterns that would be more suitable for the African alien.

Before starting to make my sculpture I decided to make a little model and see how I will work with clay. I used clay because it will be easier to add details and if any mistakes where made, I would have been able to correct it. I also made a mask as in African culture the traditional events there are lots of wooden masks even mud made masks.

This image is showing my first try in making the face. I was trying to make the face but sadly I never had the stand to hold it, the clay model was breaking every minute. But this gave me a lot of practice in working with the sculpture.

This is the mask that I made. I started making thins by having a layout of a mask them I added detail and layers of clay to make the face as similar to mine. The mask looks like it has been dived however one of the side is the alien side and another is the human side. To hint out what is the meaning behind the mask. This is mask has already been fired.

 Working progress- I started to make the face by wrapping newspaper on the stand so I would get a fresh/new start on the sculpture. Then I added layers of clay to make a ‘basic’ skull shape. The images above show how I separated the difference human side and alien. However there isn’t any detail and the ‘back of the head’ isn’t even accurate. I worked through the mistakes as I add and made the face more into shape as-well as the neck.

At this point I already made the sculpture however there was a lot of patterns on the Alien side and it kind of made it look messy. I analysed this by changing it a little bit and this was to be done by taking out some of the patterns and adding plain detail on the side of the head in the alien section.

This is my final piece as I took out the detail pattern and add some plain detail to make it less messy, also the spikes on the head are to symbolise the mountain and the hilly areas in Africa as going up a mountain and getting there is a metaphor of achieving something. I made the neck showing the improvement growing as there was no neck just before I started to add the detail. The alien side has an alien head shape and this continues on the theme of the project as I compared the two sides in one face. As a result I never knew I would have been able to make this, but the results show it’s not pretty bad. The detail in the sculpture is interpreted by animals and African mask patterns.  

Improvement- if I had some extra time I would have liked to fire it up and paint it, if possible. Also I would have added less detail to make it nicer as a lot of detail just made it look messy. By challenging my self the other improvement I would have done in this sculpture is to the face look exactly like me. As I got the proportion wrong at the first go however it got better the issue is that face doesn’t look like me as suppose to be. This is because I didn’t get the shape of the nose and the mouth right. As well as the shape of the head because it isn’t accurate to mine. Also to make it more life like (real) to look at.