Bacteria

For the bacteria project I originally was contemplating a focus on death and decay, and how decay effects the human body through processes such as putrefaction (which, after having researched, is really quite gruesome). I was quite interested in combining techniques of two artist: Henrietta Harris and Elin Thomas.

Harris because I liked the way her art seems almost deconstructed and I could use this as a way of suggesting decay when teamed up with work along the lines of Thomas’.

So the work I had in mind of producing would be along the lines of:

However, after looking more into Elin Thomas’ work, I decided I wanted to go down a different, a bit more experimental route and grow my own bacteria and initially I was planning on copying it and embroidering drawings of my bacteria onto water soluble fabric, washing the fabric away and being left with just the pieces of embroidery, but seeing as embroidery wasn’t really something I’ve properly done before and I didn’t have  much time for this project, I’ve decided to make the drawings of my bacteria out of fabrics and materials as this is a quicker, much broader method.

Here are some experiments from my sketchbook:

I grew the bacteria for a week over the christmas holidays and it went quite well, despite the fact it had the chance to make me very ill. What made it quite fun, although potentially alarming considering the end results, was that the bacteria I grew was from objects personal to me and my family such as the TV remote, or the loo seat etc.

My plan from now is to make my fabric bits of bacteria, larger than the life ones I grew, and then place on people/objects and try to give off the feel that they’re growing. I feel this is still relatable to the original idea of decay, but just showing it in a different way.

I think that the use of fabric and various other materials to create bacteria is successful as the miscellaneous nature of the materials I use is similar to the scattered nature of the growth of the bacteria.

Something that I feel I could improve on across this whole project is time management. With the UCAS deadlines and Eportfolio stress that has been the past couple of weeks, I seem to have temporarily parked this project in place of the more pressing tasks I have to do, but I feel I’ve parked it for too long and now need to get the ball rolling again.