Can't take pictures..will do it anyway

So I don't really think my blog has been receiving enough attention recently, probably because my fingers are so cold that it's difficult to type etc. BUT anyway, I thought it was about time that I put some of my silence work up here. This is the later part of my project (not silence part 2) the first part was a book of drawings and paintings surrounding the theme of cats and I'll put those up here when I find a nice way of capturing them.

I've taken some photos of the 3D work I've been making but the quality is pretty poor, I just can't be patient with a camera!

The idea behind this work is based on the lives (well, correspondence) of Prisoner's of War from the 30's and 40's. There isn't a real narrative yet, I came across the idea after I visited the 'Captured' exhibition at Imperial War Museum North. I basically started linking the idea of silence to the restrictions that the prisoners had with regard to communication, whether with each other or with their families and friends. Themes such as censorship and secrecy are what I was thinking about. I made these three 3D pieces over the past two weeks using photocopies of some letters, postcards, newspapers and photographs that I have from the time period. The imagery isn't specifically related to Prisoner's of War but they have the essence of that time which was all I needed really. I suppose they are meant to represent the way that the prisoners were trapped, they're weren't able to talk freely about things. Letters would mount up or become lost and a lot would be censored. The censorship that I've used is really just the cutting up of the letters, it makes them illegible and useless because so much of the text is missing.







The images above are the first structures that I made out of cardboard and baking paper prints. I wanted the sections of letters to have a slightly transparent quality to them, making them quite flimsy and fragile in a way and the baking paper helps to achieve this look. I also didn't want to use the originals of the postcards etc that I had. The structures didn't really turn out as I had planned, I was looking a lot at Joseph Cornell's work and obviously that is a lot more sophisticated than the pieces that I created. However I did make them in a very short time.







This is the third 3D piece that I made, after showing my first attempts to Hitch he said to try and bring the paper out of the structure and he said to make the pieces more beautiful. I decided using a frame would tie in well with the theme as the whole correspondence idea is a very personal one and has links with family and memory which is the whole point of keeping photographs in frames. I'm really pleased with the structure, it's not completely finished yet as it's very fragile and almost impossible to move around and I want to add some more detail once I have a narrative to go with it. I love the image in the background of the people, especially the woman, she really draws your attention.