Origins unit

For my project I chose Afflecks Palace. At the start of this project I didn’t have a problem with picking a topic for my project but it was more a case of how to get started that I found most challenging. The first thing that I did was visit Afflecks and take photos inside of the building but I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I did find it incredibly hard to get started and to narrow it down as to what I wanted to focus on as well as trying to relate it to the project brief. I know that I felt very lost when approaching this project and wasn’t entirely confident which I think reflected in my early stages of my sketch book. I was looking at the literal far too much my drawings were far too obvious and I wasn’t looking deep enough and trying to find out hidden meanings and look beyond the obvious. 
Below is one of my first sketches of one of the fashion stalls in Afflecks.  

I then started to look at the history of Afflecks and did research on the building itself.  This was very internet based research, it gave me some background knowledge on Afflecks but it wasn’t enough for me to fully respond to the research that I had collected as I found it too vague and again too obvious.

At this point I wasn’t feeling confident or happy with the minimal work that I was doing. I then went back to Afflecks and really thought about the project brief and what we were meant to be finding out and the discoveries that we were meant to be finding out. I found that I was very interested in the gothic, punk rocker fashion shops  that were based on most of the floors and there was plenty to look at and get inspiration from. I took some photos and also had a detailed look and stayed for a while in each of the shops studying the clothes, colours and materials that were used in the garments and foot wear. It suddenly appealed to me that I want to discover more about this stereotype ‘goths’ and why they wear what they wear. Why do they wear big leather coats? Why do they wear massive studs? Why is their main colour palate black? What does it say about them as a person? Are they really as intimidating as they seem? This gave me a burst of questions that I wanted to look deeper into and answer through my own investigation. Also to learn more about the culture, clothes, colours the people themselves.
Here are some responses to how I felt about the Gothic culture and my response to my first initial feelings about it. 

  I found that my first lecture was very helpful when I began to look into this as it was about material culture how we read from symbols and clothes, how these things can make us feel good or bad and how people and things relate. This again gave me a explosion of questions that I wanted to answer and I became very intrigued and interested in my project as I had many things to look into, to find out and develop. By this point I was feeling far more confident in what I was doing so I could now visualise and build up a picture of what I was investigating.

My chosen work shop was dye, fiber cloth. At first I was sceptical that I would be able to link this up to my project as I was unsure myself about what I was doing so again it was all a bit messy as I was un prepared for what I was doing. Once I had narrowed it down I found it rather easy to link the two together, I focused on the colour palate and used pictures that I had taken of the shops, clothes and objects around the shops to influence me. This also led me on to looking into the psychology of colour and what people think when they see a certain colour which I then related to my felt work by trying to create colours that I think represent the gothic culture.

Once researching what the colours mean I then put the respond to this research into my sketch book through mark makings and drawings using black and white media. My drawing classes also was a big influence when I started expressing my ideas onto paper as they made me realise that you just need to do it rather than think too much about what you’re doing. It allowed me to not be intimidated of working on small and larger scales, also working in a time limit which all were very helpful. This made me produce some interesting drawings and marks which I found really helpful and influential. I was content with how things were going at this point but I still felt like there was so much more that I could lift up from the surface, I had a urge to draw more and to look deeper than what was obviously there. 

From this is branched off and started to take a different approach from visual research as I felt that I wasn’t getting enough from just photographs alone. I decided to go to the shops and try on the clothes, I tried on the dresses, leather jackets and even the big black boots! I examined myself and wrote down the feelings that I felt when wearing the clothes and the dramatic change that It had on how I felt. I then transferred these emotions into my sketch book through mark making and drawings. I only used a black and white media as I thought that this would be a good starting point and I wanted to keep things simple and really focus on the marks rather than the colour. Actually being in the clothes and stood in the shop really helped me and was a big influence as I could actually respond to the feelings first hand instead of looking at a picture. The shop that I was in at the time was also very gothic and had what I would describe as violent, gothic posters that seemed to scream out a mixed message to me that I couldn’t quite understand. The environment was deffienetly one that I was not comfortable in and this I’m sure must have had an effect on my emotions which again helped me respond better in my sketch book. 
Here I looked at a different approach and looked at more delicate ways of expressing my mark makings from my research. I like the simplicity of this. 

From this I started to think of other ways in which I could find research and relate back to it.  I looked into music and how that linked into the gothic culture. I wanted to try and understand more about their culture and how they must feel. I didn’t want to stereotype them like many people do in my work so I spent a lot of time figuring out what it really is about them that makes them seem so mysterious. I began by listening to some very heavy metal music that I heard in a few of the shops that I went into when I was in Afflecks. I didn’t know what the song was when I heard it so I asked the man in the shop if he would tell me which is how I found out about this whole new scene of music. The first song, straight away made me feel very uncomfortable and on edge, I put this feeling into my sketch book and carried on creating marks as I listened to the music and remembered how I felt when I was in the shops.