Adriana Varejao Analysis

Adriana Varejao is a Brazilian Artist born in 1964, she works and lives in Rio de Janeiro. Her work includes paintings, drawings,sculpture, installations and photography. Her work is represented by the Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York City and has been included in numerous collections worldwide. Some of the collections are the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
In the mid 1990s the artist explored contrasting two different elements, flesh and tiles, The Jerked-beef ruin series from 200-2004.

Vaejao's paintings brings to mind situations of a butcher shop, a bar, a kitchen, a bathroom or a hospital; social space, domestic space and intimate space, space in which the body must be protected just as tiles protect a wall which defines the structure of a building. Protection suggests keeping under cover but Varejao suggests that it is impossible to hide the body. The large mass of meat overflows the limits of the painted canvas. Upon the canvas Vaejao paints the tiles taking precise application,spilling from the cracks emerges a monstrous sandwich of meat. The way the canvas has been applied with paint suggests the illusion of insides and organs.

This series of work inspired me because I like the way she combined two things that would not usually be together in this format. The way she's depicted the look of the meat inspired me to experiment with this idea of flesh or meat. When I first saw the work I didn't quite know what to make of it, it interested me in the terms of combining two elements thats are not fit to work with each other but on the other hand it made me feel on the edge because it looks so realistic. It reminds me of the film Silent Hill when the walls start to peel away to expose the dark side of the town. The idea of peeling away to expose what is underneath is a factor that I would like to take forward.

Moodboard: Everyday

1. Roxanne Worthington

2. Elaine Duigenan

3. Klaus Pichler

4. Klaus Pichler

5. Christian Marclay

6. Adam Fuss

7. Susan Derges

8. Kirsten Hoving

9. Elaine Duigenan

Starting Point 2

I have chosen this as my second starting point as it can be many things as whatever I interpret it as. I wanted to link my idea quite closely to what I have previously looked at, microscopic images. A running theme I wish to carry out throughout my work is the idea of what lies beneath, looking at what we don't notice and what is beneath the outside.

I am planning to look at things we use in everyday and to focus on the inside. To start with I will be looking at insides of different foods as I used foods for my microscopic images. From there I will take it further into exploring the insides of other things. 

The artists/designers I will be looking at are Klaus Pichler, Susan Derges, Kirsten Hoving fore their photograms and decaying food.

Lin Osborn

Lin Osborn uses a series of small photographs to create her artwork. the photographs are of ordinary everyday objects taken from everyday life or the natural world and repeats images in a grid like format then sometimes changes the colours in 'rainbow' for example. 

I recreated my own Lin Osborn inspired photograph. In Photoshop I opened all of my images and created a new A3 document. I turned the grid on so that the images would snap to the grid. I resized the images and arranged them in a structured order. This worked well in the sense of it being structured and because the images were taken through a round view finder it adds another frame to the images. However I don't think it makes the images any more interesting or different to what they were originally. I think a Lin Osborn style arrangement would work well with images that vary in bright colours and subject matter as it gives an order to a jumble of images. 

Darkroom Photography

Following on from my digital microscopic photographs I wanted to recreate this in the darkroom. As for the digital images I used different foods I took this idea forward into the darkroom. I used different types of foods such as syrup, flour, rice and muesli. I placed the different foods onto a sheet of clear plastic then placed it in the negative carrier. I made a test strip to find out the settings for the prints. To make the prints look like they have been taken through a microscope I cut out a circle out of black card as a mask.

I placed the outer masking on top of the photographic paper and exposed the handmade negatives in the cut out area. This did not have the same look as the digital ones with the black outline so I found a way to have it black. 

To have a black outline I exposed the centre of the cut out then carefully covered the centre and moved the photographic paper onto a different enlarger and exposed a brighter light to the outside. This had a better appearance and looked more like it had been taken through a microscope. 

Digital Photographs

After looking at the starting point of five senses I explored looking at microscopic objects. Using different things such as onion, blood and pollen. I set up my microscope and placed the different objects  onto the slide, I zoomed in at different levels to get a close up. Below is a mood board of the different photographs I took. I chose to do this as I thought it would be a really interesting way to capture 5 senses. As it is not obvious what they are it makes you wonder what sense they apply to. I was really pleased with the outcome of it as I originally didn't think I would be able to capture it as the lens is really small. 

Below are some close ups of my favourite objects. 

Leaf fibre of Silverberry

 Egg White

 Onion

 Strawberry Jam

Blood

 Tomato Juice

Pollen

 Potato

Starting Point

I have chosen this starting point as I think it can be explored in a wide range. Even though it is restricted by only the 5 senses, there can be many different ways to view the 5 senses. I am planning to research photographers that have worked with taste, touch, smell, sight and sound. The artists/photographers I will be looking at are Helen Chadwick, Adam Fuss, Damien Hirst, Adriana Varejao and Carston Witte. The materials and techniques that I want to experiment with is cyannotypes, anthotypes, cinemagraphs, handmade negatives and coloured film. The experiments I am planning to make are cyanotypes, handmade negatives and anthotypes.

5 Senses Moodboard

1.Adam Fuss
2. Sarah Illenberger
3. Matthew Cox
4. Edward Weston
5. Sam Taylor-Wood
6.Adriana Varejao
7. Olivia Parker
8. Carsten Witte
9. Helen Chadwick
10. Helen Chadwick

Synonyms of inside, outside, in between

Inside: Central, Indoors, Inner, Internal, Inward, Surrounded, Contents, Entrails, Components, Containment, Confinement.

Outside: Alien, Exterior, Extreme, Surface, Open, Skin, Appearance, Foreign, Apart, Outdoors, Beyond.

In between: Halfway, Inserted, Middle, Separating, Surrounded, Within, Amid, Intervening, Bounded, Amongst, Limbo, Confusion. 

Exam Project: Inside, outside, inbetween