welcome to the
DP VISUAL ART HL
exhibition
Congratulations to the DP Visual Art class of 2021! Inside this brochure are samples of the fabulous work created over the two year program and the students curatorial rationale which explains ideas and meaning. With enduring gratitude, Ms. Emma Hawkes & the Grade 12 Artists
DP Visual Art HL Exhibition Tuesday, April 6, 2021 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm Online via Zoom
Stratford Hall | 3000 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC Canada V5N 4E2 | www.stratfordhall.ca
ARTISTS
table of contents page 2
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CRUEL WORLD
Growing Up and Other Issues Plaguing the Teenage Mind Cruel World explores current issues affecting teenagers on an individual and collective level. My goal is to convey feelings of melancholy and desire of teenagers on various topics. The intended impact is relatability and understanding, depending on the age of the viewer. I hope peers find the concepts relatable, and that feelings expressed match their own. Hopefully, they feel less alone. I would like adults to gain an understanding of the issues teenagers face and how it makes us feel, as some issues we face are newer, and not part of an older generation’s coming of age experience. Through my exhibition, I want viewers to immerse themselves in the lived experience of today’s teenager. An important aspect of the exhibition is about nostalgia, yearning for growing up. Other concepts are more current, like climate change, how social media negatively impacts self-confidence and expectations for relationships, and how we were affected by COVID-19. Textual elements are present in almost all my pieces. Before taking DP Visual Arts, writing was my primary vessel for self-expression. I use text to help elaborate and elevate my work, and as a basis for many pieces, like absent in the present moment, love letter, and losing sleep over losing teeth, all which started as writing for the accompanying visuals. Writing deepens the expression of feelings and concepts within my pieces. As well, I used collage and photography in many works to deepen concepts and layer meaning by bringing together found images and texts. Another motif is the depiction of myself in my work. In trying to be pretty, I took self-portraits to illustrate the impacts of social media on self-confidence. This transitioned into drawings: in my book absent in the present moment, and losing sleep over losing teeth, I am the main character of each story. An important aspect of my growth as an artist, acknowledging myself and making work about my experiences, and not just the experiences of others, culminated in love letter, prose and a sketch about appreciating my own value. My exhibition was inspired by my lived experience in this time and space, and reflecting on my life. I was inspired by many artists, like Douglas Coupland, Angela Deane, and Sarah Eisenlohr. Themes of my exhibition include reminiscing about and saying goodbye to childhood; yearning and goodbye comfort club reflect feelings of fondness and nostalgia. I tackled climate change and the pandemic through my collage pieces ok boomer and musings on the pandemic. I explored the impacts of modern media on expectations 02
I have for myself and others through trying to be pretty and love, or lack thereof. I considered my inner turmoil, how I need to feel better about myself and the way the world makes me feel poorly through the text-based love letter, absent in the present moment, and losing sleep over losing teeth. My exhibition can be divided into two categories: collage elements and bold colours are present in pieces that apply to more people, and smaller, less colourful, text based personal works. They are stripped back because of how personal they are. Raw and honest, they are an unfiltered look into my mind, as opposed to the more stylized, curated presentation of other works that can thematically be relatable to a wider audience. To present my exhibition, I constructed a bedroom scene, utilizing a corner of a room at my school. The teenage bedroom is a private and personal space, and my vision is for it to be like stepping into my room, and taking a look inside my mind. Bedrooms are significant emotionally; they are spaces for reflection and where teenagers are able to express and represent their identities and experiences. This room is a biography of my life with my pieces displayed like posters hanging on a bedroom wall, or books lying on the bed. It is an immersive, collective experience rather than displaying the pieces individually. I invite viewers to interact with the space and my pieces, for instance, the viewer can flip through absent in the present moment. Overall, the arrangement and presentation supports my theme as it puts viewers in my shoes, helping them understand my feelings of wistfulness and longing.
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the gallerY
Musings on the Pande
Love Letter
Yearning
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emic
r
Absent in the Present Moment
Ok Boomer
Losing Sleep Over Losing Teeth
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THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT My art exhibition encapsulates struggle with self worth, specifically feelings pertaining to struggles adapted when growing up, stress, depression, and inescapability. A prevalent motif is line and pattern. This is prevalent in my piece Hanging by a Thread, which is a hanging piece composed of three pieces of paper. The pieces of paper are covered in globular, intricate, designs. The lack of direction and randomness of the lines conveys feeling lost, while the rounded confining lines shows a restriction- having a lack of control. The use of fine liner to create thin lines emulates fragility and therefore vulnerability. This is repeated in my piece Growing Up where I photocopied the paper with the patterns I made in Growing Up, and turned them into paper swans for a mobile. The use of motif shows the continuation with struggle with self worth, highlighting it’s inescapability. As well, a common theme that was prevalent in my pieces was hanging pieces. This is extended through Hanging by a Thread, Growing Up, My Life Right Now, while other pieces are being hung through posters such as 84 and I Just Left Earth. Being hung up conveys feelings of vulnerability as it is exposed. Other of my pieces are on canvases, where they will be higher than others: Stressed Out and Stressed In and are a continuation of my projects. Inspired by Janine Antoni’s Loving Care, Stressed Out uses my own hair that I cut off and did a freestyle painting in a stressed state, which highlighted what stress would look like. Colour is repeated as in both I used dark and cool blue and red, which alluded to the body system to show encapsulation and overall inescapability of stress, while having a gloss overlay which also shows blood, sweat, and tears which are products of stress. This is continued in Stressed In, which conveys what stressed feels like. In this project, I used the hair I painted with and stretched it across two canvases,which captivates the demanding and persistent nature of stress which is symbolic of the lack of control stress makes you feel. My exhibition will take place in the lobby of my school because struggle with self worth is persistent and imposes on your life, therefore being in the center of the space. The first piece of my exhibition Box of Life. as it conveys confining features, this conveys to the audience the reasons for struggle with self worth; jealousy, sadness, femininity, and growing up, which generalizes my exhibition. Next is I Just Left Earth because it shows growing up, which is when initial struggles begin. Afterwards is Stressed Out, as feelings of stress in my personal experience was something adapted with growing up, which is followed by Stressed In as it is a continuation of the last piece. The first pieces set a tone of acknowledging your struggles, therefore 84 follows because it shows trying to get better but being unable to. This pattern of attempting but feeling stuck 06
will be conveyed through the next piece being Hanging by a Thread, because it shows repetition through pattern and form, while showing persistence of this nature through the 3 sheets of paper alluding to beginning, middle, and end of life, thus showing it’s inescapability. After is Metamorphosis, because it shows a degree of self worth and moving on, which reflects my own life. After is My Life Right Now, because it is symbolic of my chronological experiences with struggle, showing my current struggles which show navigating issues with feeling unworthy of happiness. The last piece is Growing Up, which is a mobile which hangs over a makeshift bed in the lobby. This is the last piece because it shows cyclicality and repetition; where the mobile alludes to growing up and struggles through the patterns to show how it hangs over you, while the bed references going to bed and waking up to show the repetitiveness of struggling with self worth. My exhibitions pieces are personal because I want the audience to be able to relate or learn about the struggles portrayed, to challenge the stigmatization of mental health in my community and cast light to normalize this common issue amongst youth.
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the GALLERY
My Li
84 Stressed In
Box of Life 08
Hanging by a
ife Right Now
Stressed Out
Metamorphosis
I Just Left Earth Thread
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LOOK ME THROUGH THE EYES My pieces represent several different ideas, but they are connected by the common theme of personal perspective. The inspiration for my art stems from how I view myself and the world around me. For my exhibition I have chosen pieces that explore gender and sexuality, the passage of time, mortality, introspection and trauma and the interaction between my art and society. I have been inspired by many different artists, including Hannah Höch, Pablo Picasso, Aubrey Beardsley and Alexander Calder. Over the course of my life, particular things have shaped my worldview. I have been afraid of my own mortality from a young age, something which has shaped how I view my aspirations. As I’ve grown older I have experienced bullying, realized I am not heterosexual or gender-conforming, and had to examine my place in a capitalist society. There are many significant parts of my everyday life that might not seem that way to others, such as certain fixtures in my neighborhood or small pieces of symbolism in the art I do for fun. This is all represented in my work. The way I have arranged my exhibition is to place focus on any given piece at a time. Because the subjects of my pieces are all slightly different, I want to give the audience time to examine each individual piece. For example, I plan to position the flowerpot titled When The Earth Reclaims My Body as the centerpiece of my exhibit. As a three dimensional object I want the audience to see all sides of it, but thematically its constant presence reflects the fears of mortality I have to consciously ignore to function. I also plan to arrange my paintings in a way that groups similar emotions and themes together. On a spatial level, having pieces with different tones placed haphazardly would not give an audience member time to absorb the works. With more wall than floor space available, the paintings can be arranged separately from the sculptures. On a conceptual level, these pieces tend to have complementary themes, and displaying them from left to right gives the viewer a certain emotional experience when viewed in order. Starting on the left, The Yellow House and Ode to Safeway have related subjects and the same theme of loss, and are vaguely melancholy in tone. Next, with The Oddity, and Forbidden Fruit the negative emotions are stronger with themes of alienation in society as a gay teenage girl. Picking at Old Scabs is the low point of the exhibition: it depicts a particular source of trauma, and thus needs to be displayed with a little more space, giving audience members time to examine its moving parts and confront the emotions displayed. However, the next piece, Pictures of a Woman, is less despairing, showing an intricate portrayal of gender nonconformity. Following that is A Joy So Strong It Hurts, which conveys mixed emotions about love but is also a bright, colourful piece. Finally, the 10
display ends with Dumb Fun, a metacommentary on my artwork as a means of transforming the world around me. The same applies to Twists and Trinkets, the wire sculpture on the wall – it is slightly more metatextual than my other pieces, being about introspection as a whole, and thus ties the general concept of my exhibition together. In addition to the arrangement, there are certain techniques in individual pieces that allow for a connection to the viewer. In Scabs, for instance, there are moving parts in the painting that create an interactive element. The use of light in displaying Twists allows for an element of audience interaction, as their viewing of the piece creates a shadow that obscures the shadows of the sculpture. In many of my paintings, notably Oddity and Ode, the composition is meant to emulate a first-person perspective of the scene. In viewing these paintings, the audience can literally see the world through my eyes. Ultimately, I want my audience to understand the things that shape my worldview, and to demonstrate a piece of the world through my personal lens, a kind of indirect self-portrait and a view of the world through my psyche.
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the gallerY
Ode to Sa
Pictures of a Woman
When the Earth Reclaims My Body
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Dumb
afeway
Picking at Old Scabs
A Joy So Strong It Hurts
Fun
The Yellow House
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BRIDGING THE GAP This exhibition aims to bridge the gap between high and low art while also being a social commentary on society. The exhibition touches base on themes prevalent in today’s society that are worth discussing. For instance, mass consumerism, racism, beauty standards and female empowerment are all themes prevalent in my exhibition. All of the art pieces relate to mass consumerism, Reality Dolls is a commentary on racism and glittered mold, mwah mwah mwah, bold lips, and massed produced beauty all touch base on beauty standards and female empowerment. My intention is that the art pieces in this exhibition will offer the audience a perspective to allow the viewer to ask questions or start conversations in regards to the problems in our society.
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The artists that were great inspirations for this exhibition include Virgil Abloh, Tyler Shields, and Janine Antoni. Virgil Abloh creates streetwear that is all seen as high fashion, Tyler Shields destroyed a high-end Birkin bag, and Janine Antoni created art out of chocolate. All of these artists have different artistic styles, yet they all shared the common theme of creating pop art that bridges the gap between high and low art. I was interested in exploring a wide variety of media, such as painting, sculpture, and drawing. I chose to use a variety of different mediums because I really wanted to explore the idea of what can be seen as art. So much so that I decided to even incorporate rotten fruits and vegetables, makeup, and chewed up gum into my artwork. The fact that I used everyday items in my artwork also added to the idea of consumerism. As the audience moves through my exhibition, I hope they understand the themes prevalent in the artwork and feel empowered to make a positive difference in regards to issues present in our society that are also present in my exhibition. In order to develop a relationship between the artwork and the viewer, I chose to incorporate both a visual and interactive impact. Throughout this exhibition, I chose to use very bright colours in order to create a very striking visual impact so that I could attract the viewer to the art pieces. For example, the bright neon pink in BOLD LIPS attracts the viewer to the piece of work. In the art piece mwah mwah mwah, I decided to make it interactive as the viewer can add their own chewed up gum to the art piece. This concept allows this piece to have the ability to bridge the gap between high and low art. I have chosen to display my art in my high school. All of the pieces except for glittered mold will be displayed on a white wall in my school hallway. As glittered mold is a sculpture, I will display the piece on a plinth so that the viewer can easily view the piece from all angles. I have chosen to display the artwork in my high school hallway because as students walk by, I want them to understand that not all art has to look a certain way. Items such as makeup, gum or even fruit can be seen as art. Through the use of a diverse range of media and topics, this exhibition allows the audience to fully immerse themselves in the theme of bridging the gap between high and low art while also being a social commentary on society.
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the gallerY Toilet Paper 27:32-56
Glittered Mold
My Not so Favourite, Favourite Place 16
Can We Save th
You Fa
Bold Lips
his World?
ake Like This Louis
Reality Dolls
Mwah, Mwah, Mwah
Mass Produced Beauty 17
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