In this project I looked at Identity and the various different ways identity can be shown. I became fascinated by fingerprints and hands being one of the most common ways to identify someone. Hands are also an invaluable tool, they are used for everything and I also wanted to incorperate this. The piece of work I chose to present was a small installation of hands which I made from PVA glue on my own hand. These were then suspended from invisible thread on a nail in the wall at different lengths. I like the way they all gather together, as if it's a crowd of people, each person being represented by a hand. If I had more time on this I would add more hands, as they are pretty time consuming to make.
Starting with the idea of somehow using fingerprints, I had the idea to take photos of everything I touched during the course of a day. It was a lot harder than I originally thought and actually forgot about an hour into the photos. The photos I did get were not of good quality as I didn't think about the composition or any camera settings and just capturing the moment, which is a quality I did like about them, the spontaneity. It did help me to think more about actual fingerpints and combining photography with that.
I became facsinated with the detail of fingerprints and so thought of ways to get some good images of them. I had a glass vase which distorted the view in the background really well and so put vaseline handprints on it. At this point I hadn't had my photography induction and so couldn't sign out an SLR which would make these photos better. I felt these images were quite strong as photography was something I hadn't really experimented with in a fine art sense.
Constantly wanting to try new materials I had the idea to use PVA glue. Linking the childhood thing of painting your hand and peeling dried glue off with the fact it looks like dead skin as well as picking up all the details of my hand, I went about painting my whole hand. It became quite time consuming but I was very pleased with the results. There was something quite haunting about the hands, like dead skin but that glue hand holds all my information and could be used to identify me.
When I hung the hands up they had movement and I liked this and thought about maybe filming them turning and twisting as a final piece. The light also could play a part in the piece as the detail shows up more when light is shined through the hands. Hanging the hands upside down adds another element which I really like, giving the impression of death. The number of hands could be symbolic to the piece and so I researched some statistics to do with Missing people and crime as fingerprints are usually taken when a crime has taken place.
As I carried on using PVA I became aware of its versitility. I found an artist who creates large scale fingerprints using different materials such as mustard and wool. This gave me an idea to create a continuous line drawing of a fingerprint using PVA. I tried this on accetate and discovered I could peel it off once it had dried, creating a delicate, flexible panel. I made a few of these to explore another possibility of a piece and started to sew them together. At this stage I had two main ideas that I was happy to continue with but decided to use the glue hands to present as I felt they had more room for personal interpretation, I also liked the fact it looked similar to dead skin which had a creepy effect on the work. Some of the hands didn't turn out as well as they could have but again people could interpret that to say some peoples identities are damaged and not perfect. Scale was something I was constantly thinking about and I would have liked to make many more glue hands and to fill a wall, but they were time consuming to make.
Strengths-
Researching Identity, using simple, inexpensive materials well
Weaknessess-
Time management on this project, deciding what to present, scale
