Gordon Cheung uses book pages as a surface to paint on.
Peter Armstrong is an artist whom collected images from his favourite magazine since 1990 and surrounded his home with them to create a kind of shrine. This idea is a unique representation of a relevant and recent, modern day shrine.
What I want to create is an environment which people can take something from. To create something powerful, relevant and something thought provoking. Challenging ones beliefs without disrespecting the viewer. The piece will be an all round sensory experience that stimulates the mind, body and soul. Heightening ones senses including the smell, hearing and sight.
Looking into different opinions and aspects of the shrine, I did a lot of thinking and realised that a shrine from the 21st century that isn't based around a religion would be entirely different from one that is. Everything from home comforts to music and everything that we experience within our lives is different to what it may have been 20 or 30 years ago. Maybe I can create Shrines to give people different feelings by placing them into unusual, unlikely and unfamiliar situations.
I have been researching into the different aspects and meanings of the word shrine and looking at the varying perspectives, opinions and interpretations that surround it. I intend to engage with people and draw my own conclusions based on the research and responses people give me.
These images of Leah Gordon's work has inspired me to create a series of environments from the viewpoint of different people, as though to stand in someone else's shoes and depict a shrine of different people and at what different levels people need to be to feel comfort. I looked at Christian Boltanski's work as research into different ways of creating an environment. His work creates shadows on the wall which would be an interesting concept and way of creating some kind of soothing environment. While browsing online I came across Joana Vasconcelos and this particular piece of work from 1999 named 'Spot me'. It intrigued me as I thought that the message it shows compliments my project due to my interpretation of it. I felt that this showed quite a strong message surrounding vanity and self indulgence. People are largely focused on their outward appearance and I picked up on this based on what kinds of things peoples shrines consisted of (such as images of themselves etc). It gave me more ideas towards creating a small shrine environment. The basis and meaning around this would be to find out how people feel within the environment, to see if what I consider a shrine would be comforting to them as well as myself. I want to create a small environment for people to visit and note down their feelings whilst inside it so that I can determine reasons why people prefer different environments to feel at comfort. It would be interesting to investigate how people create shrines and for what reasons they have them.
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