The course leader, Pam, is very up to date with contemporary art and artists especially in and around London which is what I've been looking forward to the most. Her knowledge and passion for the subject of fine art and it's history is something I find inspiring and was a joy to listen to today. We went over the course basics and materials and were given a small starter project as part of a competition called the Diversity Arts Award; we have been asked to create a small or large work of art exploring diversity in subjects such at gender, sexuality, race etc..
I decided to touch on my experience with sexuality in my work, having had many friends come out as gay, lesbian, bisexual and also many transgender friends all of whom have shared their experiences with me. I am honoured to be a part of all their journeys and decided to start work on a big collage that celebrated good overcoming evil in the situation of homophobia. I plan to have negative images of anti-gay protesters such as the West-Borough Baptist Church in America and anti-gay protests around the world at the bottom of my large work in black and white to show the lack of life and personality these people have and their negative impact on society and it's growth. I will play around with these images at the bottom of the work, photography and photocopy different positions and edit the images in Photoshop to come up with my final results. Above these images, most of the work will comprise of bright, bold and colourful images of pride celebrations around the world, the happy people involved in the marches and rainbow banners/floats. These images will my collaged around a colourful screen print or drawing of a brain scan with the text "Love will always conquer hate" written above the brain. I am yet to play around with the images properly and plan to draw over the top, use tissue paper, string etc but have started by doing a small drawing and laying all the collected images out to get a rough feel of what I want.
I enjoyed working in this way; quickly and roughly to get a feel for the images and idea. I do not know how much time will be spent on this project but I hope to have a colourful, positive image to hand in on the 14th October and a decent amount of research into pride and protests as well as a small number of collage artists.
