Artist Profiles: IB DP Visual Art Exhibition | Carmel School Hong Kong

My name is Bradley Sullivan. I'm in grade 12 and for my DP Art Exhibition I focused on the themes of dystopia and the fall of man in regard to our relationship with technology and our humanity as mankind. I wanted to introduce the viewer to a gradual transformation from a recognizable world into a world of unfamiliarity and I wanted to draw focus to themes of humanity and what it means to be human and what it means to be empathetic creatures and to show how our relationship with technology has impacted and influenced our connection to those around us and our surroundings. In my first few pieces I wanted to show a world that is recognizable with features that we can connect to such as a living room which presents a space of intimacy however there are underlying themes of tension or underlying hints of tension and foreshadowing to something to come and I wanted to show a transformation from urban modernized world into a world that has been reclaimed by nature to suggest the lack of life and to suggest the fall of man and this leads into a gradual change from man into something more machine-like or I contrast flesh with metal to suggest a change in what makes us human and from being warm creatures into metallic hard hard-shelled creatures that lack the same characteristics that we had previously and I wanted to emphasize the change from human to machine and almost take away characteristics that make us human such as our eyes and give them to this metamorphosized representation of technology that towers over us as a species which is shown in the piece Seconds Before Disaster. In this piece of living room I created a panorama photograph that depicts an unsettling scene of distance between relationships and the stress of the world which is shown in the crumpling of the newspapers which is supposed to act as a representation of being scared by the things that are happening around us but yet constantly just throwing it to the side and creating a bigger pile that just continues to add up. I wanted to show the distance between us as people in which I used lighting and spacing to emphasize. I show a great deal of distance between one model and the other to suggest a sense of distance as we tend to isolate ourselves in this new modernized world of technology where we lack real authentic human interactions between one another. This piece was also created while we were in lockdown last year so I wanted to take the feelings that I felt inside and put them into my artwork so I created something which I felt internally and I was able to replicate using my personal space of my own, my house, and I used my parents' models as the ideal there personal to me. My name is Jessica Jay and I'm a grade 12 visual arts student and the title of my exhibition is Exploring the Darkness of Entering Womanhood and my exhibition aims to explore the darkness behind entering womanhood and often the performative aspect of the nuanced nature of identity. I often explore conceptual art and performative art to kind of highlight the performative aspect of the nuanced nature of identity and shed light on the complexities behind this darkness. My exhibition employs archetypes of femininity such as using the Greek goddess Venus as kind of a symbol and a representation of this perfection and modernizing this symbol and turning her into a grotesque figure through the use of digital art such as photography and film. I aim to kind of capture this linear process through the development as a young woman in our society today. So my first piece of the exhibition is titled The Duality of Woman and it was inspired by an artist called Sue DeBeer and she is famous for her works Exploring Identity and Nostalgia and Memory and she often does this through the method of dual projections. I created two videos that align with each other however they are made through inverted timelines that when the audience views them together they will see one figure going through different routines in both videos. This piece was meant to represent the deep fixation and the obsession of trying to document one's appearance to achieve a perfect ideal standard of beauty. Makeup in the sense of this chaotic makeup routine acts as a metaphor for a mechanism and a tool for painting a spot. Taking the narrative aspect of theatricality in my works I created a series of photographs titled Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. I did this to show the again formative aspect of putting up a front in society. I was inspired by the works of Jeff Wall to create this chaotic yet staged setting to show the figure's internal dialogue. Within the series of photographs the figure is also seen as dominant but also passive at the same time which highlights the duality of how entering a moment that is both a confident act but can also be quite passive and vulnerable at the same time. Followed by these acts I wanted to take this idea of Venus and inspired by Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. I titled my piece The Death of Venus to show how the celebration of womanhood and beauty is ultimately not a celebration anymore within our society today and show the deterioration of Venus's ancient symbol. This piece was inspired by Cindy Sherman's untitled film stills where she wanted to represent the idea of gender roles in society through the use of black and white photography. This entire piece was taken in black and white however one photograph obtrudes throughout this piece which is which was taken in color and the colored photograph of this piece represents the figure's snapshot and awareness into reality. Through capturing a very staged setting I wanted to make the figure also look very staged and in doing so I'm taking inspiration from Venus's ancient symbol. Venus's golden orange hair was seen as a signature look to her appearance and to further contemporize her hair I used a orange wig that I purposefully cut up to look very unsettling. I wanted to show the deterioration of Venus's symbol. My final and last piece titled Facades was inspired by a painter Francis Bacon. I captured scenes of what appears to be a self-portrait becomes screaming figures in terror. To take these pictures I used a long exposure camera effect to show the escape that one may desire when not wanting to conform to societal expectations. This piece provokes a notion of confusion, anger, fear, and terror that all spiral within a retrospective of entering one.