fyp on the beach

It wasn't entirely play. :)

I tried some similar videos with text but the tide was going out. Maybe I'll go back another day when the tide is coming in.

Brunch insights

early sketches

I had a talk with my mother over brunch. She told me about her mother walking out on her father when he turned violent. "That taught us that we can say no to abuse," she said. Later on she moved back, and the family's story ends happily.

But what was irrevocably reaped from this episode was education. She said, "I knew what I must do if my husband ever beat me. It takes generations to learn this. In my grandmother's time women were 'oh he beat me but I cannot tell anyone, it's a shame. Only a broken rib, at least I'm alive.' Three generations down, now you won't even marry a man who perms his hair."

I swear that's my mother's exaggeration. But I get it. Silently suffering abuse is hereditary too, because children watch and learn.

By the end of lunch, I had grown a beehive of thoughts. This campaign could be educational.

seeing things #2

Julie Morstad

www.fourexhibition.blogspot.com

Carolyn Alexander

James Gulliver Hancock

Rob Ryan

Hans Op De Beeck

Sam Winston

story sketches #2

The last two days of camp are the hardest because they push us away. T gave away the present I gave her. She ran into the lift and pushed me out. "Don't follow me!" When I hugged her goodbye on the bus, she asked if i was coming along. I wasn't, and she pushed me away. I looked at her through the bus window but her eyes never met mine.

The older children are better at facing the reality of goodbyes, and let themselves cry. M always warned us about being pushed away. It's just a defense mechanism for those who are scared of separation.

Just as well, I thought, because I can't promise her forever either. I can't even give her more than five days. Still I wonder how raw her hands must be, from pulling and pushing, pushing and pushing, not even willing to make memories.

story sketches #1

It's a campaign that revolves around a story.
I want to make her somebody you love.

And so when you love her, how can you condemn her?

seeing things #1

Beauty is subjective. This is the beauty I like--a little raw, a little scraped off. All artwork not my own.

It's like a nightmare, and yet it's so sad that you want to hold it close.

I like white space, a lot of it. 

I like ambiguous fairytales told with disturbing lines. Somebody is eating somebody else, somebody is afraid, but who? 

Paper engineering is, sometimes, everything. I learnt that the hard way in year one.

What makes this image is the shape of it. And the absence of just enough.

And flatness: so gustav klimt, so egon schiele, so whitewash-over-an-underpainting. I hate gradient colouring. Let everything be pressed and pasted on walls.

This is the time for new images to be born. Every new phase has life of its own. I watch with amazement as lines and people come spilling out of the pen. It's time to stop seeing things, and let the pen bring forth what it will. 

More string explorations on the table as the sun was setting.

And pages from the book that resulted from all the exploration, shot on the light table.

Isn't daylight always prettier?

After my fruitless contemplation of an installation for fyp, i think I will do a campaign instead. Because what I want to say is best said in words, actually.

So the campaign will include:
1. a book
2. exhibition concept/ panels
3. collectibles (notebooks, stationery etc)
4. a video

I've been toying with many slogans. But today while casually telling a friend about my fyp, I said, "I'm looking at Abusers as the Abused."

And i think that is actually it.