Category: Concealed Illusions

Discussion in previous weeks has been based on ‘Common Themes’ within our class,  helped me understand the links between all of our performances, the most frequent words that were used were time,past and present and people.  Many of us are using members of the public as the performers watching and analyzing what they are doing, making them the performers and us the audience.

Particularly in our site specific performance, we have chosen the painting of Lincoln, painted by John Carmichael (1858) which is located in the Usher gallery  We have been questioning what makes this painting special? What is the main focus? What do people draw upon? What is their interpretation of the painting? Would it be interpreted differently if it was to be displayed somewhere else?

All these questions were yet to be answered, however with the on going research and experimenting with people and their responses some of these questions have yet to be answered.  By asking questions to the members of the public, recording and taking pictures of what we see.

Both The Usher gallery and The collection have a different atmosphere, The Collection being nosier and interactive where as The Usher gallery being a much more quieter and a calmer place, both of which attract members of the public.  We originally wanted our piece to be located in both parts of the museum connecting the two buildings together but due to the development of our piece which is focusing on a certain area of the usher gallery (the drawings) we have discussed that it would not make sense and there wouldn’t be a valid reasoning behind it.

We have decided to focus on the drawings because our theme is masking. The drawing area helps create the illusion of copies, which encourages us to create a meaningful performance reflecting upon women being copies of beauty. How most women highlight key face features to impress and look beautiful making them a copy of themselves.

The painting of the Brayford by John Carmichael (1858) was moved and replaced with a Venus de Milo drawing which was a spanner in the works for us! But with a little bit of research it turns out that the new exhibition represents beauty, love, affection  This significant link between the two paintings has emphasized the meaning behind the two paintings. How the old reflects idealism and the new drawing also reflects beauty, which highlights and signifies our underline meaning of our performance message.

A new idea which we have explored today was the use of make-up techniques instructions being over played on a sound system whilst we are performing again the repetition of the day to day process which most women go through to look good. Make-up technique instructions are usually  found in feminine magazines or on the internet and even social media websites now, we have used different types of make-up instructions also incorporating painting instructions to show the similarity between masking a painting and masking a face making both products an image or an exhibition, which could reflect ‘the world is our stage’ becoming something that your not.

An Identity is the set of meanings that define who one is when one is an occupant of a particular role in society, a member of a particular group, or claims particular characteristics that identify him or her as a unique person 

Burke, Peter J and Stets, Jan E (2009) Identity Theory: Oxford

Through Make-up, clothing, hair style and any other form of identity this can be seen as masking our individuality  making ourselves look a better ‘version’ of ourselves. This is seen through social media, magazine, television, making it our image look better as part of our day to day routine.

Questions that we ask ourselves are- Who is it for? What it is for? Is there a particular reasoning or is it just normality? Something that because the ‘normality’.

‘ If beauty implies the power of capturing men’s affections even for women who are deficient in understanding and reason, ugliness can be perceived to have the reverse effect’   Hecher, Dagmar (2007) The narrative construction of the female body in the British novel of the 19th century: Germany

Nowadays wearing make-up is part of a daily routine for many woman. Does a woman put make-up to make them feel better about them selves or do they put it on to impress a particular person? Beauty is a theme that anyone can interpret-ate  allowing the individual to create their own opinion on beauty whether that is natural or fake.

Through our performance we are using make-up showing the amount of make-up we put on, especially for a night-out or an occasion, it can create an un-naturalistic image of ourselves.  We will show this by the repetition of putting make-up on, highlighting the impact of a on-going routine that most women face. Our rehearsal process has been quite painful, as the impact of make-up being put on and off can be a painful experience due to the chemicals that are within the products.

Using make-up removal wipes heightens the effect of reality, which could be seen as the ‘ugly truth’.  Not stating that women are ugly without make-up, absolutely not,  I am just emphasizing the fact, the effort and time that goes into concealing ourselves, which of course will be reflected in our piece.

Referring back to the ‘ugly truth’ when seeing something so neat and the make-up being a sense of perfection to seeing the make-up removed and on the wipe, this reflects a dishonest reality. Seeing the ugliness of make-up making it look dirty and grubby, creating a no filter image.

We have discussed and explored labeling ourselves after each encounter with the make-up, for instance when the make up is applied we would label it ‘fake’ or ‘illusion’ the same for when the when make up is removed using text such as ‘honesty’ or ‘natural’. This process would be on-going giving the overall outcome of the three of us covered in labels, reflecting on society labeling the type of people/fashion in our modern day world.  The question we ask to ourselves, is the labeling necessary  Do we need to make it so obvious?  This is something that we are going to discuss and explore further, perhaps with projection or sounds.