Visit to National Portrait Gallery
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Project 3 ‘Portraits’
Deadline:
07/02/2018
Aim: Using the research you collected during your visit to the National Portrait Gallery and the briefing presentation as a starting point choose three of the ‘Personalities’ from the list below:
George Orwell – Late writer, James Baldwin – Late writer, Malala Yousafzai – Activist and undergraduate, J.K. Rowling – Writer, Neil MacGregor – Art Historian and Museum Director, Richard Serra – Sculptor, Yayoi Kusuma – Artist, Rachel Whiteread – Artist, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst – Political Activists, Jean-Michel Basquiat – late artist, John Akomfrah – Artist and Film maker.
Objective: Create outcomes for each of your choices that communicate your understanding of the selected ‘Personalities’ Portrait. You may wish to use a range of techniques to create the outcomes. The size and shape of your work is also up to you. Look at existing illustrators or artist’s work and analyse its strengths and weaknesses. You could also think about a suitable environment to situate the personality in, this could be a simple image that does not clash with main portrait e.g. Architect: famous building or Writer: scene from their book. Use lateral thinking devices to help you develop ideas for the appearance of your chosen ‘Personalities’ it is important not to be too literal during this project. You worked in a conceptual manner during Project 2 so you might wish to do so again here. Think about the location that your portraits might appear in. Where would your audience find these portraits?
I’ve chosen the following three (actually four since Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst are presented together) ‘personalities’ for my portraits:
J.K Rowling, Malala Yousafzai and Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst.
I choose these incredible women because of their strength, their importance in history/herstory, and the inspiration and empowerment they give me. It also follows the themes I’ve worked with during this semester, both in class and my CTS choice, Design Activism. I’m very curious to find out more about them than I already know and to dig deeper into who they are/were as persons, their childhood, their inspiration etc etc. In that way I hope to create more depth in my portraits.
During tutoring yesterday VJ talked about how to approach a project in a different way than one usually does and to take that chance during this project. So on the 9th of December I’m going on a guided tour arranged by the Museum of London where one walks through Westminster and Soho in the footsteps of Emmeline Pankhurst, ‘Slasher’ Mary Richardson, Nancy Astor and some less familiar names, as we tell the story of women of all classes changing society and discover what life was like for women at the dawn of the 20th century and learn about famous women who fought for women’s rights in London. My hopes are to get a sort of physical connection to Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, and of course to get more educated. It’s also a brilliant opportunity to be able to ask an expert more about them and the suffragettes and might lead me somewhere I wouldn’t have thought of myself. Also going to Museum of London to check out their exhibition about the suffragettes this week. So I’m very exited about that and where I’m gonna end up afterwards!
I’ll continue with research on my other two ‘personalities’ too, but this is where I’ve started. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle at the moment, and piece by piece I’ll put the portraits together. Since it’s quite a long project I also feel that I have the time to explore a bit more thoroughly and as mentioned before, try new and other ways to approach a project than I normally do.
Thoughts / notes tue 28 nov
happenings, events
Suffragette locations in London
E & C Pankhurst home
acquaintances, family
SOFIA WIKSTRÖM 