I have been carrying out a comparison, an analogy, comparing humans to jellyfish. I wanted to compare the movement of people from the Mediterranean with the movement of jellyfish in the oceans. Using jellyfish as an idea, a symbol I wanted to create my own tribe. I named this tribe ‘The Jelly Heads’. They will be manipulated and constructed to be shown in my solo show ‘White City’.
I have Googled lots of images and watched nature programmes. I found out lots of interesting facts like jellyfish have been around for 600 million years. They can be very dangerous if you get stung by them and one of the most poisonous species are the ‘Portuguese man o’ war’. The jellyfish are also colonizing parts of the world which are not normally their habitats. They are being taken all over the world travelling on ships.
I like their fierce, primitive nature. I like the fact they clump together to form floating islands. When I see people clinging to life on inflatable dinghys, I immediately have a picture in my head about the jellyfish migrations.
.
I am creating a fictional tribe, almost conjuring up a ‘Jellyhead’ tribe. I’m showing how easy it is to construct rituals and myths around people. I am creating a migration dance and playing ritual drum music .
I will be delving in to the local archives held at Kensington Library and Hammersmith Library. There will be documentation and material to do with the 1908 Franco-British Empire shows held at White City I can use to draw upon.
The problem solving activities I’m faced with are the nature of inks and spray paints. I’m going to use these and I have been experimenting with using spray paint on aluminium and combining oil paint with spray paint.
I also want to find out what happens to watercolour and inks when they are put in to an organic jelly medium of some sort. What sort of dilution takes place and how does the pigment behave ? I will be investigating this over the next few weeks.
chudclowes's Blog 