Head On by Cai Guo Qiang

Rest a Little on the Lap of Life

I really enjoy the work of Polly Morgan and it was lovely to see this piece up close in the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester earlier this year. I think she would be a great artist to include in my dissertation. Using creatures that she finds dead on the road, and given by friends, she breaths "new life" and creates something beautiful that would normally have withered and rotted into the ground, therefore being forgotten or unobserved forevermore.

Uncle Colin by Tracey Emin

This piece by Tracey Emin is low-key and more subtle than her more well known works, such as My Bed. I learnt about this touching tribute to her dead uncle by reading Art & Death by Chris Townsend. She never knew her Uncle as he was killed in a car accident before she was born. Saying this, she still felt the need to document the tragedy, as it would be quickly forgotten once immediate family died, therefore immortilzing him through her artistic status. A seagull features in one of the frames; returning to the idea of a spirit passing from this world to the next.

Early American Epitaph

I came across this thought provoking epitaph in Jay Ruby's book Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in America (an excellent book).

Stranger, stop and cast an eye;

As you are now, so once was I.

As I am now, so you shall be;

Prepare for Death and follow me.

Pale Armistice, 1991

I first came across Rozanne Hawksley when visiting the Imperial War Museum in London earlier this year. Pale Armistice was part of the Women's Exhibition, which has become a permenant feature, and I was immedialtely taken by it. It's delicate beauty and craftmenship is a great contrast to the startling reality and consequences of war. The white gloves could represent the women and children who survive war, who mourn the dead, or, it could represent the civilians who perished in occupied countries. Hawksley provides a current slant on memorialization. I Will Fly South...For Mathew,1995-97, (the background image for my blog) is a personal piece about her friend who died of cancer. The bird represents Mathew's spirit (christian beliefs) which is about to be released from earth..."I know i'm going, it's okay, I shall fly south to the sun and the sea" (said by Mathew to Rozanne).