Dough as flesh

I’ve had illness after illness, crisis after crisis, including writing my dissertation which has taught me how easily you can become a hermit when there’s so many words to write. 🙂 These images are some more experiments, baking and experimenting how dough could be flesh. I’ve also been doing some writing apart from my dissertation which I’ve put a little glimpse of below. Let me know what you think, I love hearing others thoughts. 🙂

Just one thing stands between us.
Part mother, part child, part other.
Like the spare pastry left once the gingerbread child has been cut out. All that holds us together seems to be the apron strings tied above my waist.

Jasmine Gauthier

The Kitchen as a Womb Experiments

Here we have a selection of some of my experiments so far this term from looking at the kitchen and especially baking as a way of conceptualising the creation of a child. Let me know what you think, I’d love some feedback. 🙂

George Dunlop Leslie

I’m not quite sure why I’ve only just come across George Dunlop Leslie but his paintings are incredible, and I feel like I recognise something of my work in it so deeply that I can hardly keep my eyes away from them. I love the boredom, the mundane-ness and just the sheer beauty of his use of colour and light. So here are my three favourite images that make my heart pound that little bit faster.

The Boy & The Twins – Åsa Johannesson

I saw Åsa talk about her work recently and I couldn’t wait to share it on here. The Boy & The Twins is an absolutely fabulous piece of work and her work in progress series Aryan looks absolutely superb also.

The way she interweaves the staged posed images of the boy against her own autobiographical images of her and her sister in their tomboy childhood is so beautiful and works so well. Coming from knowing quite a lot about and having experienced from others the issues and feelings around being transgender, I’ve felt in my own experiments how difficult a subject it is to tackle as an artist, as we are surrounded by imagery and projects on gender that I feel sometimes almost work against the feelings and reality of being transgender.

As far as I can see; to be trans is not necessarily to be flamboyant or loudly self-expressive, nor is it to comply to strict social rules on gender purely to blend in. It’s the ability to be yourself and be happy with that, much like everyone else. It’s not ABOUT becoming something else, it’s purely about being (and sometimes, becoming) yourself and being true to that. Anyway to move on, I love how she gently juxtaposes the two halves of boyhood. There’s a time in some trans individuals’ lives where they almost return to this boyhood or girlhood they perceive to have ‘missed’ and follow an accelerated version, returning back to secret dreams and desires they may have repressed (either consciously or subconsciously) from their childhood and perhaps adolescence. This idea is what comes across so strongly to me in the juxtaposing of the two images.

There’s an awkward sense of reflection on the part of Jacob, the boy; where it’s almost like the images of Johannesson and her sister become projections of his own subconscious past as perhaps two halves. Some might feel this split is about gender directly but others feel this split is between the physical body and the inner identity.

The Johannesson sisters are almost stalked by Jacob across the images, like he is observing them; perhaps their behaviour, perhaps just their twin-ness; much like one would observe animals on safari or in a zoo. Jacob’s poses suggest a sense of frustration and boredom which I feel is very telling of his own life story; there is always a lot of waiting and seeing involved.

Jacob holds a banana skin with a semi-clenched fist, his eyebrows sense a certain agitation, whether it’s because he is being photographed in the first place, play acting for the camera or if the image touches in on a subconscious frustration at the time. The banana’s reference to absence of full male genitalia is interesting especially as it appears like knuckle dusters, another subtle reference to masculinity.

Jacob and his partner stand on the path together; their clothes echo one another and they stand together staring out at us. The path looks fairly derelict and just behind them lies the remains of a broken children’s treehouse, once again whispering suggestions of boyhood. The image is named The Path, naturally echoing Jacob and many others’ journey ahead.

http://www.asajohannesson.com/

http://www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?ContentID=504992&CategoryID=36646

Cat’s False Alarm – Sample12 Exhibition

Cat’s False Alarm – Jasmine Gauthier (2010)

I’ll be exhibiting in a group show called Sample 12 at ThePrintSpace in London (see address above), from 3rd – 28th Feb 2012 (Mon-Fri). The Private View is on the 2nd February, 7pm until 9:30pm. I’d love to see some of you guys there or perhaps drop me a line if you do visit another time during the week and tell me what you thought!

Thanks!

Erwin Olaf Photography & Films

Olaf is well known for his photography  but I was not aware of his film-making so much until last year when I stumbled upon his book in a library, it came with a CD of his films and it was fascinating. I hope you enjoy a few of these trailers for his films, you definitely get the feel of them. Perhaps I love them so much as they are all about a strange suburban american dream that gets twisted in different light, a bit like gregory crewdson’s series.

Annabel Elgar

Annabel’s work was a fascinating find at the recent exhibition at the Wapping Project: Bankside (http://www.thewappingprojectbankside.com/exhibitions/index.shtml). I kept returning to her work more than any of the others as they were dark and beautiful, reminiscent of fairytales and full of strange narratives.

The exhibition had this to say about her work:

Annabel Elgar stages her work in imagined places that might initially appear idyllic, but contain unsettling details that suggest otherwise. Her photographs recall strange fairy tales and cultish activity, but their subject matter is real life torments: relentless s truggle between the rich and the poor, the home as a site of poverty and ruin; the family a source of treachery and despair.

http://www.annabelelgar.com/

Fleeting Other

Here is at last a final edit of a piece called Fleeting Other; looking at pregnancy, the female form and the experiences of pregnant women in their lead up to motherhood. I wanted to explore how women see one another as well as how they see themselves; the forms suggest growth, proportions and perspectives. The work also touches on the isolation of experience of each of the women despite the solidarity as mothers.

Do let me know of your thoughts on the work. 🙂

Pregnancy Series Continues II

Sadly I’ve been unwell for over the last few weeks but I have been working as much as possible. Here are some photographs of my latest shoot a little while ago but soon you will see posts of some new shoots in recreational areas, moving away from the domestic into the open.

Sarah Jones

The photographer that has inspired me probably the most through photographing these women is Sarah Jones. I know I had written a blog post including her work previously (https://jasminegauthier.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/christopher-hunt-hannah-starkey-sarah-jones/). I wanted to ensure I’d made a blog post specifically looking at the work, my views on the work have probably changed since a year and a half ago.

The work, if you don’t know it, focuses on the environment’s these Home Counties adolescent girls live in despite them feeling uncomfortable with it. She captures awkwardness and boredom beautifully and with such detail to colour and composition. As I am personally looking at this waiting and boredom surrounding the final stages of pregnancies as well as the anticipation of change, her work is so relevant and I feel a great parallel between the two.

What governs my thoughts with this work now is what these women are doing now. Have they distanced themselves from this world or have they now embraced it? What do they think of the work now? What did they think of the work then? It’s interesting to think of all these questions, it helps me see how my work might be seen and viewed in the future.

http://www.antonkerngallery.com/artist.php?aid=15

http://www.maureenpaley.com/artists/sarah-jones

http://www.rca.ac.uk/Default.aspx?ContentID=503338

http://dev.colorcubic.com/2010/06/07/the-visual-art-of-sarah-jones/