My FMP proposal seems to have been well received and plans for a huge road trip are being drawn up. As I weave together my approach before setting off and beginning the actual shooting work, I’m mindful of a number of comments and suggestions that have come in from a number of quarters – both tutors (Colin and Laura) and fellow peers from both the BA and MA cohort, which are incredibly useful.
I’m thinking about making my recreations and stagings less ‘obvious’ than they perhaps were in Becomings. The key challenges I face are how to combine the aesthetic inclinations which attract me to the likes of Elina Brotherus and Casas Broda, and the digging deeper in places into the psychology of trauma and the archive.
Above: (left) The Shape of Mourning in K. (Right) One of the portraits from “I”. Both by Eamonn Doyle
Thus far, the strength in Other Mothers lies in the story-telling side, in the text. The challenge is how to take snippets of that and turn the personal into the universal, imposing greater economy through the words, distilling down the key words in the text to enhance the eventual impact and to work with those to resonate more closely (or not, because words and pictures can diverge, run parallel etc, depending on the desired narrative effect of the combination).
And, within the staging, I want to be more focused on body shapes and gesture, playing where appropriate with invisibility or partial visibility, to lower the key and to make the end result less Gregory Crewdson and more Eamonn Doyle.
Artists I need to get looking at include:
- Shoji Ueda
- David Heath
- Bobby Baker
- Kurt Tong
- the film director Roy Andersson
References:
eamonndoyle.com (n.d.). Eamonn Doyle. [online] Eamonn Doyle. Available at: https://www.eamonndoyle.com [Accessed 12 Jul. 2021].
