LIFE CYCLE OF MATERIALS - current project (creative strategies)

 Using an animals heart to cast from i have been exploring how the heart can be used as strong visual imagery in order to represent or communicate loss, fragility of life and mortality.  The importance of my process and materials hold great significance to my childhood behaviour and the transition into adulthood. Looking at the idea of life as  cycle i have been experimenting with how to visualise the different stages in between birth and death such as youth, growth, destruction and decay in to rebirth. The materials i use are chosen specifically to the emotion or stage i am trying to portray in my work, as well as materials having a life cycle of their own. For example copper self oxidises in the air. 

Using my own personal experiences with loss i have been exploring the idea that the heart could be seen as a vessel in which the mind could be located, and that our brain a physical organ like the heart is the container of all knowledge and  logic. Therefore making the heart emotions unpredictable and the heart the greatest bearer of both physical and emotional thought. Initially i wanted to explore the idea that the heart could be in fact be imprinted with the emotional strain of life, every bruise and scar and using this idea to visualise it. But with the development of my materials i began focusing not on a final finished piece but the destruction of the beautiful work i have spent careful time and consideration making. And that through the destruction of my work i plan to use film and photography not in a documentation sense but as a media itself to portray a emotional quality which the viewer is able to experience and interpret in their own way.