#lvl5

Still a WIP but here’s a quick update of Burr! Just have his bow and the Roost left to do! He’s come a long way and He’s only Level 5! Just a little bard in a big world!

The more I thought about the idea of a photocopier the more I felt the process of photocopying reflected the ideas I was exploring. As news and information and images multiply around the internet, their meaning, or truth, or origin, or context gets lost and distorted, much in the same way that if you copy, of a copy, of a copy, of a copy, the image gets distorted and detail gets lost. I began to think more about this idea of being over exposed to graphic imagery. I think there is a commonly held understanding in society, that graphic imagery, even in video games and movies should be somewhat regulated, we have movie ratings based on these kinds of ideas. I thought about the images that had really stuck with me, having seen them on the news and social media, images from the war in Syria, Images from the Australian bush fires just passed, and now images from the developing Coronavirus outbreak in China.  

I wanted to explore how seeing violent and upsetting images over and over again, numbs you to the reality of them and makes empathy and compassion with the real people affected hard. I thought about repetition of imagery a lot, and the ease and speed with which images are dissipated across the internet and social media.

Immediately the photocopier came to mind as an almost immediate way of replicating images. I’ve always loved the 70s punk and 90s riot grrrl DIY punk ideology that is particularly present in the creation of zines and posters- which often utilized copy or xerox machines to quickly and cheaply make lots of copies.

 I think another reason I liked this aesthetic when thinking about the work I wanted to make, was because of the anti-authority, free thought, anti-corporation ideology associated with punk and this kind of imagery and ways of making it. This relates to my work as in many ways it does feel as though we are being controlled by big corporate entities, encouraging us to live in fear and reject the suffering of our fellows because we cannot relate or empathize to it.

I remembered seeing Keith Haring's Xerox works on display at the Tate Liverpool, and upon doing some more research discovered Marlene Weisman, who showed work in a Xerox art show curated by Haring. Her way of working with copies was interesting to me- for one, because she thought outside of the box of what a copy or a copying machine could do, and secondly because it was important that the images she was using were copies, the techniques and ideas her work were based on the use of copies. Seeing the way in which she worked with copies, and the history behind the use of photocopies in art, helped me to think more open mindedly about their use within my own work. 

The more I thought about the idea of a photocopier the more I felt the process of photocopying reflected the ideas I was exploring. As news and information and images multiply around the internet, their meaning, or truth, or origin, or context gets lost and distorted, much in the same way that if you copy, of a copy, of a copy, of a copy, the image gets distorted and detail gets lost.

This is particularly present in Marlene Weisman’s Natalie and Ruth at Coney Island (2017), where the kind of fading and repetition and loss in detail makes the work feel almost like a memory you can’t quite make fully clear and in focus. 

Initially, I printed off some images that had stuck with me, photocopied them, photocopied the copy and repeated this process until I was satisfied by the level of distortion. I was particularly happy with a couple of the outcomes of this, and I scanned one image to be digitally printed in a workshop with Steve. 

When discussing the work with Steve, he said he wanted to see the stack of photocopies. At this stage I began to realize that the process of how I was making the art was actually more significant than what I was then considering to be these ‘final outcomes’.