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Censored
red (detail) Eltham High
School, Eltham |
NGV: Erica, what are you doing this year? E:
I'm doing Creative Arts at the University of Melbourne. It's a VCA course,
but it's based at Melbourne and it's a course that crosses over visual
and performing arts. That's why I took it on, so I could keep up all the
drama I did in VCE whilst also keeping up my visual arts. I could maintain
those subjects - media, film studies, photography, studio arts,
art, drama, literature — you could keep up doing that course.
E: I
looked for a theme that was appropriate to my status as a developing artist.
I felt it was really important to have good subject matter – subject
matter that conveyed my message. I didn't want to rely completely on the
technical stuff – the technical aspects of making a painting. I always
wanted to work on myself as in self-portraiture, but it was hard deciding
if I could pull that off – to get the message I wanted across and
produce a good piece of art. At first it was difficult to make a final
decision. After lots of trial and error, I decided to concentrate on the
female body, as in my own.
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NGV: Having decided upon that as a theme, did you have any particular artist that influenced you? E: Yes. I was strongly influenced by Cindy Sherman. In the beginning I saw a documentary on Cindy Sherman and that was how I came to want to explore self-portraiture on a photographic basis and then from that I took it to my painting. So she had a strong influence on me. In her work she liked to dress herself up and things like that. In my work it's evident where I have wings on my body as I'm exploring different kinds of characters for myself. While maintaining strong relevant issues such as censorship, which I've explored through the white tape. Brett Whiteley was always one that influenced me for figurative drawings with his sketchy unfinished pastel type drawings. These elements can be seen in my work. I linked the see-through bits with strong black lines. I distorted the body so it was not completely realistic.
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