Searching for identity : documentation for 'Body as metaphor : illness as manifestation of cultural crisis' and 'A woman's place : the implications of technology and the built environment on women's lives
Creators: name: Scott, MG
Publisher: name: University Of Tasmania
Year: 2023

description: To begin this proposal I would like to write briefly about my past work so that its relationship to the development of my current work may be understood. Most of my work to date was a means for expression and release of underlying psychological fears that I experienced as an anorexic female. The issues I addressed revolved around my desires to explore personal needs. In order to do this I sought to become an autonomous individual by rejecting the feminine body and related material objects, which to me signified potential problems. I explored the notion that appearance plays an important part in establishing and validating self-identity and became increasingly interested in clothing and the connection to our 'real' selves and our 'social' selves. By selecting subject matter relevant to my immediate existence and surroundings, personal i terns that made up and created my individuality (bits of clothing, fabrics, ornaments etc.) , I tried to come to some understanding of the nature of my true self. These inanimate objects I considered to be 'safe' and 'harmless', removed from outside influences and the confusion of the 'real' world and people. The avoidance of outside contact and consequent inner emptiness and loneliness, was reflected in these often dark, introspective pieces. The anorexics obsessive seeking of unobtainable perfection and control in all aspects of life was expressed in the technically precise quality of the work. The egocentric nature of these works led to my desire to put my experiences outside myself and to place them into a social context, to give them more universal form and meaning. With my current and future work I will continue to address these concerns of body image as integral and essential in projecting and creating identity, selecting images from the external environment to deal with the ever increasing problems of women - self-image, identity, and femininity. My interests lie with the partly obscured image or parts of total images - like a series of movie stills. I feel these may develop into total abstraction of forms so they will become part of and indefinable from the patterning surrounds - a fusion of body, image and mind; the individual maketh the clothes (image) or the clothes (image) maketh the individual? I seek an intimacy and personal contact in my work and hope to retain this by creating small works in mainly series form, that demand and draw the viewer in to become personally involved. Though created as individual pieces each work will relate to the others to form a whole concept. Technically I wish to combine my past discoveries with new imagery which will satisfy and encompass these objectives and concepts while continuing to explore and experiment with contrasts of positive and negative shapes and space, representational and abstract (patternmaking) forms. I am concerned with illusions of space and flatness and the construction of the picture plane as shallow staging and wish to build up and explore surfaces and tonal qualities, for the purpose of creating a variety of visual and actual textural areas to explore these spatial problems. I aim to construct pictures in which shape, colour and spaces form a unique set of relationships, independent of subject matter but which at the same time capture and preserve the emotional overtones created by visual experience. I would eventually like to expand my work into printmaking especially lithography. Although my interests may alter/intensify in specific ways, the areas outlined above will be the starting point towards producing a body of resolved and exhibitable work at the end of two years.