Inspirations from Chris Townsend book ‘Art and Death” 2008

Townsend’s argument in the book’s introduction is based on the idea that a person in any type of relationship with another knows that one will outlive the other. One will experience the others death. That when you die it creates a community of people who are the experiencers of your death. Yet the self will never experience it’s own death. Townsend’s first chapter covers the artist Francis Bacon, there are obvious sadomasochistic themes Townsend comments that Bacon uses photographs rather than live models in a portraits. Nor does he use a mirror in a self-portrait. Stating the significance of the use of photographs. The photograph being the dominant force in art in the 20th century. That Bacon’s shredding of these photos is violent that there is significance in the photos destruction. Tearing through the images to imply that which can’t be seen, death, the void.

I have used photos of myself in this project. In one image I have torn a hole that represents the sizer of my mother’s cancer, but also to represent the void, the emptiness in grief. It had not occurred to me that there could be a symbolic reason in the actual cutting of the photo and the canvas.

This leaves room for an exploration into performance and a destruction of the canvas. Cutting a hole into the canvas at the public exhibition of the art work.

So it not only represents the void and loss, but also the desire to be rid of that ‘feeling’ or the ‘empowerment’ of removing the cancer from myself. A ritual?