EMILY DICKSON

My work centres around five main themes; Femininity, the male gaze, religion, ambiguity as self-reflection and the connections you make between my artwork and yourself. I convey these ideas through my use of collage. Using a vast collection of archival materials that range from scientific essays to religious magazines and pornography that are a direct juxtapose. The materials I use are particularly important in conveying my messages as they mention topics, I am passionate about and issues I think need to be addressed. As an artist, I want to bring about social change, and I do this by creating opportunities for self-reflection and conversations you might find tough to have. 

My work is open to more than one interpretation, I want there to be a sense of anonymity surrounding my pieces as I create social commentaries in my art. This creates a space to talk about critical issues and subjects that need to change in society. I experimented in many ways and concluded that by surrounding my work in ambiguity I force the viewer to think more about the world they live in. By taking my own immediate connection away from my work I leave space for the audience to insert themselves into awkward and uncomfortable situations. The archival material I use has no set date they from one hundred years ago to the present day. I want there to be no set time or place and my work needs to be focused on the issue. This also shows how the problems I show are still prevalent. Contrasted with these sources I use my own photography. I have taken photographs of myself interacting with millipedes. The images induce feelings of discomfort and objectification. They make the audience think about our relationship with creatures we are afraid of and imitates how women are objectified. I want to provoke a feeling of discomfort. 

The process I use to create my work is very intuitive. Having the collection of archival sources to hand I put together excerpts of text and imagery that seem odd and strange. I then think about what connotations these have when I have forcefully stuck together opposing ideas. Having a mixture of vastly different subject matters is helpful in making people think about the differences in opposing views. I also incorporate sewing into my collages as this permanently pieces together with my work and illudes to connections I want you to make. Using Pink paint and paper in my collages helps highlight issues in my source material such as the male gaze. It also places femininity as an important topic and connects the views and positions women have been put in, throughout the archival sources. 

My work has a visual narrative but also suggests a narrative of someone looking to find millipede pornography. This comical reference has a dark undertone and creates a sense of eeriness. It makes you think about your own sexuality and the issues women face being objectified in life. My work wants you to question why someone would look for something obscure and obscene. The millipedes can be seen as suggestive, but I want this to comment on how we put perversions onto un-pervert things. Just like how the male gaze interprets everything women do as suggestive. What this narrative is implying is that anything can be objectified. 

Artists such as John Baldessari have inspired my work as his use of cut and paste style collage is something I feel Is impactful. How he uses colour to hide faces or objects promotes self-reflection and is something I want to replicate in my work. Similar to this Barbara Kruger has helped me explore text and colour in the same way and has a really important emphasis on getting her message across. The text I use in my work is from various sources, but I have made particular words stand out frequently using calligraphy from a religious text. The outdated terminology forces you to make the connection to the present day and how there hasn’t been much social progression. There is still work to be done.