POPPY ANDREW

12 STUDIO ARTS

Identity

Sunder

Identity encompasses a wide range of ideas and philosophies. In my exploration of what contributes to and defines identity, it became clear that a person’s space and environment is key to understanding their inner self. My final piece embodies this idea, as each image in the collection is inspired by an emotion, memory or perception of a space within the model’s childhood home. ‘Sunder’ is a reflection of both a collective and individual experience of a young girl finding her own identity in a modern day world. An old mannequin is the sculptural base of the piece, an ode to the demands that a consumerist society expects of young women. As seen in many of the photographs, the model is critical of her own appearance, due to these unrealistic standards, and the melancholic atmosphere and expressions of the model in these images symbolises her distaste in these elements of our world. My final piece depicts a host of ideas that I have thoroughly unpacked in my research of this topic and is tied together through colour and fragmentation. The colours in my images are the same as the colour blocks on the mannequin’s surface and they are an illustration of the model’s emotions regarding her environment as well as the requirement to be externally appealing at such a young age. The combination of photographs and paint (mixed with posca and pva), symbolise the mixture of external and internal factors that shape the model’s identity. What seems to be a bright, colourful exterior, upon closer inspection, is a sundeorus identity, composed of various aspects of past experience, environment and external validation.

Undefined

My second artwork ‘Undefined’ explores the role that self-expression plays in defining an identity. Through my research, I discovered that self-expression encompasses a wide range of ideas, such as what a person wants to feel through their clothing, what a person is expected to wear and how the interplay of these two factors impact an individual. In this image, the model is wearing a mixture of her own clothes, that remind her of her childhood, and her relatives’ clothes and jewellery; an ode to her past and how this has helped her define her own style. The blur of the image is key to the meaning behind this piece, as it represents how the model, and many other young girls, are unsure of how to integrate their own style and self-expression into what is expected of them. This image symbolises a struggle in the search for self-expression, as well as a sense of power once it has been discovered, emphasised through the low-angle. This artwork utilises colour in the same way that my first piece did, representing her emotions towards the topic that I am exploring - her own self-expression. Green and pink are both positive colours for the model and represent a sense of happiness and excitement, these were included in order to brighten the piece and mimic that sense of power she feels when expressing herself so freely. The name 'undefined' was chosen due to its connotations of freedom from social boundaries and categorisation, as well as a sense of uncertainty that is experienced as people find their preferred method self-expression.