Letters From The Inside Essay. Letters from the Inside by John Marsden - snomass
Outside looking in
1. Inside looking out
outside looking in
OBJECTIVE – to consider the theme from one possible perspective - identity
2. Who are we? inside or outside
Lynn Hershman
Helen Chadwick
Alison Watt
Frida Kahlo
Rebecca Horn
Cindy Sherman
Mark Steven Greenfield
Rachael Howard
Hannah Hoch
Bill Viola
Magdalena Abakanowicz
Potential Artist Research
3. Lynn Hershman
• Lynn Hershman is one of
the most influential artists
working in the areas of
gender, technology and
identity today.
• Hershman works in
photography, video, photo-
collage, and multi-media
interactive installations.
• Issues surrounding female
identity are at the forefront
of Hershman’s work and
she links these issues to
our continued relationship
with technology. Another
key theme is the notion of
privacy in the era of
surveillance.
Phantom Limb Photograph
4. Mark Steven Greenfield
Collage/photographs
feature appropriated
photographs of blackface
entertainers
superimposed with text
presented in the form of
an eye exam chart.
Greenfield confronts the
viewer with the legacy of
blackface minstrels and
the stereotypes it
perpetuated about African
Americans.
5. Banksy the outsider
• Banksy is probably the most
popular, yet most
mysterious, urban street
artist in the world. He has
become internationally
known as a subversive
graffiti artist - yet manages
to maintain a secret identity.
• He is a counter-cultural
prankster, but has art in
major cosmopolitan
galleries around the globe.
Banksy’s work has sold to
Hollywood celebrities, but
much of his subvertising is
freely (and illegally) drawn
on public surfaces.
• He works against the mass
media establishment, but
has been featured in local,
national, international news.
6. Catrin Mostyn Jones
• Work inspired by exploring images of the
human body at a microscopic level, together
with fragmented textures and colours of creatures
of the sea.
7. • An altered door, "Women Story,"
depicts a figure as negative
space — an apparition created
only by its painted outline, which
looks like encroaching mold.
Above it, a series of tiny, drawn
vertical dashes resemble both
nails and days ticked off by a
captive.
• The nail, for example, yields
multiple, shared readings.
There's the omnipresent
association of Christ staked to a
cross, and its latent sense of
tortuous sacrifice. There's also
the nail as construction tool.
Here, nails form crosses. Nail-
like tick marks represent
language — the birth of
Puni Kukahiko
Long, thick nails slide into hinges,
propping dual doors into makeshift
constructions that deconstruct the
various connotations of shelter (a
prison, built by sacrifice, the
imposition of one culture's idea of
shelter onto another's).
•And then there's the "X": a mark of
the cross, maps, the female
chromosome, and removal (exile,
extinguish, to cross out).
8. portraits
• Chuck Close's Big Self
Portrait and Kiki are
painted in very different
ways. Can you guess
why?
• Consider Marsden
Hartley's Portrait of a
German officer. Does
this look like the portraits
you have seen before?
What makes this work a
"portrait?"
• The Sande Mask and
Intrigue both focus on
masks. What is a mask?
Describe the differences
between the masks
shown in these two
works. Describe the
similarities.
Sometimes we wear a metaphorical mask to hide
what is on the inside with what is on the outside.
10. For next lesson (Tuesday 18th
June)
• Create a Powerpoint of
artwork from a wide
variety of sources
consider looking outside
your usual materials for
inspiration.
• Be bold and be ready to
present your images to
the group and explain
why you found them
interesting.
• photography
• theatre
• dance
• architecture
• graphic design
• printmaking
• painting
• song lyrics
• poems
• quotes
• textiles
