over the summer break i got back into my collage/illustration practice. i've been super inspired by the dawn of the apocalypse and all the tedious bullshit in my day-to-day... annd the stark contrast between the two... debating which is a distraction for the other.

i've been ripping up magazines and books about space
and human biology
and different audiovisual technology ...
as well as my 90s stoner and punk music mag collection.
this is an attempt to capture something about the essence of this juxtaposition.
my partner got this little thermal receipt printer for christmas so i've been using that in collage as well.. it comes with a lot of pre-loaded safety logo designs that i like incorporating.

the orb drawing was inspired by these recently discovered UFOs the conspiracy theorist homies are eating up. something about science fiction motif also keeps coming up,. or the occult. counterculture feels like vampire hunters or witches or aliens or something. more on this later.

i've been in frequent transit so this a5 sketchbook has turned into my makeshift studio wall. i'm still obsessed with this receipt printer and need to get my hands on my own.
it allows me to replicate my pasteup/painting process on a smaller scale & generate ideas that can be blown up onto the walls of spaces eventually..

the past 8 or so months have been weird and strange and cataclysmic..
ive had autonomy over my life forced back into my hands in a major way & all the parts of my framework for existence have been
solidified/destabilised
/fractured/revived
I've been looking into countercultural art's historical use of occult motif [characteristic of my recurrent psychoses] & making connections to my own practice [see top right notes pages]

been throwing together imagery from my collection of 80s-00s music/kush/porno magazines because i've always been an admirer of how they make subjugation look like liberation and self-destruction sound like healthcare. this ~subversive consumerism~ appealed to me when i was younger and realised i had no place in the greatbig nuclear heteropessimist hivemind family.. and did it's damage just as brutal as normie consumerism. something about juxtaposition of glowing childhood innocence with tits and legal highs

in 1st year i worked with spider imagery to signify the wisdom/creativity/beauty of the other/demonised & used uv neon to bring in visual elements of live music culture and how diy shows/raves act as a sanctuary for alternative/oppressed/countercultural expression

i wasn't super happy with the final install or the pieces in general in terms of finish and detail.. but i liked the sentiment and how the different iconography came together to communicate the feeling i was attempting to get across

so i'm trying to reconfigurate this concept through new illustrations. what i didn't like about this install was the tiny scale and lack of dedicated dark space as a first year. these are problems to which i have since found solutions

i don't have a uv bulb as we currently speak but moves are being made in silence

some thoughts and revelations from over the break. i've been in this weird place surrounding subject matter since looking into the symbolism movement... i love how they utilised symbols from folklore & multiple religions to evoke emotion and imagine alternate collective realities, & it kind of reminded me of how pop art uses cultural figures and popular media characters similarly, because they evolved to fill the roles of gods and creatures as avatars for cultural ideas.

this train of thought somehow turned me into less of an atheist. within these artistic movements and their historical analogues, artists have repeatedly recognised this link, even if critically, between spirituality and collective connection. the way this art has a lasting impact, through evoking ritual/worship/offering/altar, tells me there is something functionally useful about faith. psychosis and shaky reality informed a belief that utilitarian purpose (not necessarily empirical evidence) is what makes something real. so fuck it. magic is real. why not.

in first year, i did a project working with the spider as a symbol for counterculture. i really like what it represents to me but wasn't happy with the project outcome at the time.

for my first wall work of the year i wanted to reiterate this idea with some of my more recently adopted studio conventions. the pasted poster exists within the tradition of counter-cultural street art and independent self-promotion.

i started with this spider from my sketchbook, pixellated it to appear more digital, and repeated it in various full-saturation CYMK colours. the colours didn't print in a particularly satisfying way, so i probably should have used the colour-managed printers. other than that i was happy with the aesthetic outcome, but had a hard time explaining what i'm trying to say with the work.

think the context will work itself out as i add more to the wall.

the recent release of the epstein files has me all fucked up thinking about how so many major fashion and beauty brands are linked to mass sex-pestery. it's illuminated how advertising has disrupted my own self perception and as a result self-respect.

this self-portrait is an illustration based on the style of cartoons i grew up with, which repeatedly pushed me to self-actualise femininity. this is combined with a collage of advertisements from various magazines. this speaks to the synthetic construction of the selfconcept through external media influence, which has been sending me into spiral as of late!!!!!

i never actually got around to pasting this up. i contstructed the image from a4s and used tape to test how it would appear on the wall, but wasn't sure about how it interacted with the spider paste-up. i need to do more looking into how my wall works play off each other when in proximity.

top left illustration is another sketch exploring the identity constructed via external media.

tthe rest of these notes are from recently in class/critiques, thinking further about what it means to construct a reality or sense of self.

getting back into Judith Butler & starting to read Baudrillard's Simulacra & Simulation to learn more ab this.

top left illustration is another sketch exploring the identity constructed via external media.

tthe rest of these notes are from recently in class/critiques, thinking further about what it means to construct a reality or sense of self.

getting back into Judith Butler & starting to read Baudrillard's Simulacra & Simulation to learn more ab this.

i experienced a particularly gnarly period and it made me angry as fuck. if the globe is warming and the climate is changing why do i even need a built in next-generation-incubator.

that got me thinking about how if there were an empty space where the womb was, corporations would probably exploit that too. that thought became this sketch.

i liked this concept more than other works in my sketchbook and wanted to run it through the paste-up process, with the kind of repetition i did with the woodblock piece last year & patrizia's altar. i sourced images of the stuff proposed in the sketch & a subway surf screenshot for good measure.

i like this work as a paste-up, and conversations about it in studio have been fun. it makes me happy that people are drawn to my art for the humour and gimmick of it then stick around and actually have a think. this sort of thing makes me feel like my work is doing it's job. the work also functions well as a gif, the digital element making it contemporarily relevant, but i can't get that same type of engagement without having a bigger platform.

i've deleted all algorithmic feed-based social media - tiktok went 3 years ago when i noticed the great empty chasms in my memory between Short Form Video #1 and Alright Turn The Damn Phone Off.

twitter had me for a minute. it had me under the illusion that i was actually building a network. later this year i'll crash in nottingham with someone i met on there in high school. then we had a change of landlords. technofascist influx. a cautionary tale on the monopolization of ones attention economy.

now i have none of them because the iphone eleven is intentionally obsolete. we really are just at the hands of the technocrats like that. as the days pass i feel less cyborg and more human.

its got me wondering whether coldturkeying social media is even possible longterm as a conceptual artist trying to Respond to the Culture... when dominant popular culture is Netizen ForeverPerformance Overconsumption Hyperreality

at least i'm writing these thoughts down instead of scrolling about it. anyways happy winter peace and love to vitamin D and fuck you to special K

V-tubers are virtual youtubers, a phenomenon that's evolved with 3D modelling and rigging software. people are able to gain a youtube following while existing entirely as a cartoon alter ego. this is attractive to me, as my art is basically working with an alternate version of myself shaped entirely by consumption. i wanted to use V-tube modelling and rigging software to act out some disgusting consumption fantasies i would never engage in irl

i use these sliders and settings to change the proportions of the model, while the assets are entirely illustrated by me. hair texture and movement can also be edited, modeled, and rigged by individual hair segment. i want to make this character a super brightly coloured cymk version of myself.

the assets i made (eyes, nose, eyebrows, etc.) are all in grayscale so i can make any character in this illustration style very quickly. got that classic popart mass proudction excitement.

you can manually create animations with the model now, but i wanted to rig it to track my face. this relates to the idea of cyberspace as an extension of the physical self & will allow me to create fake streams with the character! VSeeFace is the webcam rigging software i'm using.

i connected the VSeeFace virtual camera to OBS screen recorder and just started recording. tapped into my darkest desires and ended up on leafly wishing i could order illicit substances to my mailbox. here's a clip of that recording. this has so much potential i can't begin to explain. the worldbuilding of this little digital universe is starting to get really exciting for me. i would love to use some screencaps from these experiments in a paste-up too.

for the indicative assessment, i wanted to combine my collage from the start of the year with my recent 3D and illustration work. by juxtaposing various media and visual styles i hoped to create an overstimulating installation reminiscent of ad media and digital culture, the central theme of most of my work.

the orbs

the orbs are purely worldbuilding. they're inspired by the series of recent UFO sightings combined with the character gastly from pokemon, combining my interest in crack-pot conspiracy theories as counterculture & the mass-produced blind-box toy aesthetic of consumer culture. in my universe, the orb aliens are sources of nuclear power, annhilating humanity with the goal of saving earth. basically tiny sentient suns but also the aliens from bugonia.

i wanted the orbs to cover the wall and serve as background/context for my works with people in them. the orbs and their impending apocalypse have the effect of making people want to consume, spend, prep, and hoard.

the streamer

the streamer is my cyberego. she consumes without inhibition and streams the spectacle of her tiny bedroom existence for all to see. i used screenshots from the fake stream i made previously to create faux youtube screenshots, based on the very contemporary fantasy of hiring darkweb hits on those who do you wrong. the streams being livestreamed hits on a landlord and a boyfriend speaks to my anticapitalist and antipatriarchal principles, while also taking the piss out of the dark side of online shopping. i love these works. i wish the print-out didn't have a typo :(

the install

this was a nightmare. printers decided they'd never heard of my login before the weekend before hand-in. anyway. i got an extension and managed to install. i've got the process of blowing shit up onto the wall on lock at this point, and i'm proud of my freaky hectic laptop for managing with this one. many pixels and many layers.

once i'd pasted up the bigger works, i added some leftover stickers that i made along with the posters for patrizia's altar just for some extra overstimulation.

crit notes

People immediately recognised my attempt to recreate digital overstimulation in a physical space, and I think the direct printout of a YouTube thumbnail really helped with that. A sense of anxiety due to pop-up window imagery was mentioned, and I think this is something I'll further bring into my works because of how universal it seemed.

I liked the morbid relatability these works seemed to have. Lots of my classmates admitted to dreaming about the ol' darkweb hitman in particularly dire times, and I found that very cyberpunk to hear. I also think it revealed to me that maybe my mottos of "anything's possible behind a screen" and "anything's free behind a screen" may have revolutionary potential.

I got some good feedback regarding the digital alter ego. We talked about my 3D character who exists to consume, and how it relates back to worldbuilding concepts related to the construction of self. This is relevant to my other works revolving around how we construct identities informed by our media intake. Holly recommended "The Cyborg Manifesto" in relation to the digital alter ego & anti-capitalism.

It came into question whether the studio/gallery space is restrictive for me. I do think to a certain degree it is, because a big part of my work is creating solidarity amongst those who had a similar experience being raised by computers. We discussed whether, because of this, I could bring an interactive element into my work, but I'm not too big on making participatory art after struggling to get people to interact last year and feeling corny as all hell.

Next semester, I'm heading to Nottingham, UK on student exchange. For the next 3 months before I go I intend to get as much of Te Whanganui-a-Tara covered in my art as humanly possible. I've also been scouting Google Maps around my accommodation over there for cool potential paste-up spots. I have some family history in Nottingham so I think it'd be pretty cool to have the two cities physically connected by my art. I've never been overseas, so I honestly couldn't tell you who I'll become or where my practice will go.