Brief Encounter

Headway East London Brief

I selected the Headway East London brief, and found myself in a group with three other students who I had not worked with before. Each had different backgrounds to me in terms of their practice and are in later cohorts which would make for an interesting collaboration.

Headway East London offers services to brain injury survivors, their families and carers. These include our Day Service, neurological therapies, community support work, advice, advocacy and family support. As the effects of brain injury are long-term, so is their support.

Headway’s services are built around creative and therapeutic activities, such as gardening, art, music, or cooking to name a few. The video brief provided by Headway highlighted how much these services contribute to the well being of the attending members and also the success of the charity.

Headway’s brief asked the students to come up with a digital campaign that could be run during Brain Injury awareness week.

LEFT: TONY, AN ARTIST AT HEADWAY EAST LONDON. RIGHT: HIS ARTWORK, “I CAN’T REMEMBER FUCK ALL”. Coverage on Vice

Having had a quick look through search engines, it seems like until recently the charity have not really had much in terms of a focused campaign, instead it has been more organic press that has come via promotion of their artist studio (Submit to Love) and events including exhibitions. They have had coverage by Vice and BBC to name a few and seem to slowly be building up a following online.

Refs

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/3kg7e5/a-journey-into-the-radical-art-of-brain-injury-survivors

Research

My project is a study in the acts of devotion between myself and my partner. Predominantly I am going to be researching regarding the concepts of marriage, devotion rituals, and relationships represented in photography. Something that interests me are artist couple shots, or artists who predominantly create portraits of themselves and their partners – pixy lao for example. If I wanted to diversify I could also look at how artists represent other couples, notions of love, commitment, fear, sadness and all the other sides of devotion.

I am reading chapters on aesthetics, colour theory and studying cinematography,as well as scouring the internet for moodboard images.Something I have been obsessing over recently is a site of cinema stills – https://film-grab.com/ and using it to observe body language, lighting and colour.

Stephen McCoy, from the series Housing Estates, Set 4, 1985

My project is immediately an inward study however the aim is for it to be relatable somehow, that is also something I am looking for in my research.

Home Sweet Home
Curated by Isa Bonnet

This collaborative/mass participation exhibition is an insight into the evolution of national identity from post war utopia, to the country splitting result of the Brexit referendum in 2016

In capturing this personal, domestic space from so many perspectives, the exhibition weaves the individual back into the collective, pointing to the collision of dreams, aspirations and realities that defined each era in recent British history. Seen together, the minutiae of each ‘home’ becomes part of a wider conversation about the shifting sands of national identity.

Here the curated output is the formalisation of data to make up the study. Taking from many different sources rather than just one photographer, the exhibition becomes a catalogue of memory as well as an indexical journey through time.

https://www.rencontres-arles.com/en/expositions/view/771/home-sweet-home

Death by Selfie / Blog
Martin Parr

Martin Parr, Death By Selfie Series from 2018.

Martin Parr describes himself as an anthropologist over a photographer, his work is all about chronicling humanity through his unique and often humorous perspective. Parr’s work has been exploring based around the concepts of Leisure, consumption and communication throughout his worldwide travels. If you go on his website and look through his blog you can get a sense that he is simply interested in the world and interested in mapping the cultural similarities and peculiarities through a subversive and yet non-bias perspective. One of my favorite blog posts is on the selfie related death statistics.

Martin Parr travels the word preserving what he sees through photography, his work is the research. You could argue that it is one constant project that will expand as he continues.

Death by Selfie

These research methods could map on to my own in my process of collecting influences and mood boarding. I could search through marriage images from around the globe and through time to influence my work as well as using aesthetically driven mood boards.