Cold in the earth – and the deep snow piled above thee, Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave! – Emily Brontë

It has started to snow here in Reykjavik. Since arriving it has snowed far outside of the city, up into the mountains. but this week the snow has come to 101.

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? –J. B. (John Boynton) Priestley

On my walk into town this afternoon, just as the light turned i managed to snap a few lo-fi images using my (not so precise camera phone). i will endeavour to correct this, and alas turn to digital. i have avoided digital, debating that you lose the patience and creativity with digital, i much prefer the ‘shoot from the hip’ approach-that way its like a lucky guess when you get developed what the pictures were.

The developing and scanning for 120 film is considerably cheaper than in london, but if i plan to improve my camera skills i think investing in a good digital slr would be the best start. I hope to find a Nikon Coolpix P90 in the Sales, but at £250-300 its not a massive payout if i dont.

 

These are Images i found in a Historical Icelandic book in the Photography Museam, which luckerly they had in the City libeary so i photocopied in refernce to my Cake Coffin Project.

I have yet to track down the ‘Corpus Camera’ Film about ICelandic Funerals and Post Mortem Photography-im hoping that the Film council will get back to me on that. I am going also to search out a few texts in the University Libeary tomorow, which will hopefuly tell me more about how Icelanders deal with Death.

Till death us do part

more interests of mine

-zombies and horror characters

here are a few pictures that i have painted since being out here

Acrylics on Milk Carton

Acrylics on Milk Carton

.

a few weeks ago, i had made a sculpture of a zombies eye. I am now unsure  if i should extend  ino a 3d painting, or more of a figuratie sculpture piece.

here is what i have made

Sculpture made from Newspaper, PVA glue, Toilet paper, and Painted with Acrylics

Cake-Post Mortem

This is my first blog i have created, im unsure how it works and to be honest quite daunted with it.

I hope to understand it better so i can write about my ongoing projects and document my time here in Iceland.

My current project is making an edible sculpture/installation, to look like the Victorian, Post Mortem photographs.

i have always found it strange why people have used terms like ‘ he/shes so cute i could just eat him up’ or something similar to talk about children. When looking at this literally, one would be actively suggesting cannibalism. which is horrifying and un natural. The post-mortem photographs themselves were made to capture a loved ones deceased before burial, and were ‘made up’ for public display. In many cases the children were positioned to look alive, or in fact if they were just sleeping, not actually dead.

To consume and to reproduce are the humans are two natural instincts.
Giving birth I feel is the actual opposite to eating, in birth we produce/create through expulsion. Eating is destroying through entering the body.

I would like to combine the images of birth and death, also with sex and decay. Through allowing viewers to eat the ‘baby’ to add another link to cannibalism – although im unsure of this idea, maybe i will just allow the cake to decay naturally.
In modern society we have disconnected with the death process, often having closed caskets.

i am currently looking at Artists- Grayson Perry and Helen Chadwick. Chadwick for using food in her art, and being a woman. i feel creating this ‘cake baby’ could be symbolic with the fact i am a woman.

Grayson Perry looks at Charms and Rituals in his 1996 exhibition ‘Charms of Lincolnshire’ in which he created a child in a coffin, not dissimilar to mine, from clay, to explore how different cultures deal with death. i would like to include this in the piece.

i am fond of baking, and have a morbid fascination with death-so in these 2 interests of mine i would like to create something to provoke and question how we  as a westernised society deal with death.

 

 

 Excerpt from a blog- analysing the Political Narritive in the film ‘The Cook, The Wife, The Thief, The Lover’

 “(It is easily as savage as Swift’s “modest proposal” that if the Irish were starving and over crowded, they could solve both problems by eating their babies.)” – see link for full context.

 

Here is a Photo of Carrie Nyes Head from the film Creepshow, which has been make into a Fathers day cake. i think this is a great image, and very good reference to my project!