My piece consists of a collection of water samples from the River Tyne. My intention in doing this is that the river is always changing with the flow of the water. By collecting samples of the water I am encapsulating a small fragment of time, much like a photograph. The samples have been taken from Newburn riverside as that is where I have grown up, and the river has been an unconscious object from my life as I have taken many walks along side it, from dog walks, to walking the path of the roman wall to just little trips out to the park. The river has been there thought-out all those things, yet has always been different because of the movement of the water. In capturing the water, I have captured moments of my life, and moments of history. To accompany the jars, I have collaged aspects of my life into Victorian photographs of Newburn, these are all familiar sites to me as they have not changed much in the 100 years since they were taken. Much like the water these photomontages have captured moments of time from my life and Newburn Village.
My Final Piece
Evaluation
My intentions for the piece was to capture a snapshot of the River Tyne in a different way to taking a simple photograph of the water, I wanted to catch that certain moment in time by collecting the water. The river always changes as it is constantly flowing so in collecting jars of the water I am able to encapsulate that small moment of how the river was at the time I collected it. I have paired the jars of water with Victorian photographs of Newburn village, that I have photo shopped with photos of my own childhood as this is where I have grown up. All the Victorian photographs of the village are all familiar places was they have not changed much over time. I combined the jars with the photographs as they all have aspects of capturing certain times, the photos are a mixture of history of the village and my own history and the jars have their own history from being part of the river that has been there throughout all events in the village yet they also are part of the present as well as the historical memories of Newburn.
During this project I have had lots of struggles with my ideas and where the project was actually headed, I tried many ideas until I found the right one for me. I am happy with the outcome of the project as the end result worked out better than I had imagined as I had been struggling to get to the point I wanted to make. In the end I managed to make what I believe to be a strong piece of work, the combination of the jars of the river water and the photomontages have really worked well. The photographs give the jars more depth and reason than just plain jars of water. And the jars have aided the photographs by making them blend well together helping the photo shopped images to not be as obvious in the photos as they end up distorted from having to view them through the water. The jars also make the image almost move as when you look from different angles the photographs seem to move about in the jars. Together they both work in harmony and bring my over all interest of history and preserving memories into a 3d form.
The Final Show
In the exhibition my job was to arrange advertisement for the work. That put me in charge of the posters and getting them to the public. Through the group not working well enough together I ended up loosing my job as advertiser as we still had not made a finished poster. This was due to the fact that we had ideas of what to do for the poster but I didn’t have the means of making it as the group wanted to either use a group photograph or photographs of the work that would be in the show. This had not happened before we broke up for Easter so I was unable to work on the poster. I ended up being ill on the first day back and due to time limitations other members of the group made the poster that day. After that the other members of the group took it upon themselves to advertise the show through emails and social media. This left me feeling pushed out of the group but in the end I was able to swap jobs with another member of the group so I could collect the money for the show. This helped me feel at least a small part in the show. So over all I felt very excluded in the making of our show but some of that was due to my own social anxiety and not being able to speak up for myself.
The final poster
Show Description as you entered the show
A View of my piece in the gallery space
Maeve Dawson Art 