In Pop We Trust

Hello! The most important part of me doing Erasmus is to make work, so let's talk about my work. Obviously I'm Kate and I paint and all that, but recently (as everyone knows) I've been going off on a bit of an intergalactic adventure... An intergalactic textile collage adventure, and whereas I know some people don't like it very much because they feel I should make nice paintings and drawings of people for my entire life, I happen to love it. It's new, it's exciting and it's FUN. And it's allowing the side of me that wants to be Chris Ofili to run a lot wilder than ever before, and without having to spend tons of money on resin and elephant poo. (I just have to spend tons of money on fabric instead - it's really, really expensive in France - good job I brought half my stuff from London over with me eh?) So the first thing I did when I arrived at school (after marvelling at the unisex toilets - eurgh) was to warm myself up by making this beasty:

It definitely had to say "Oh shit..." on it, because that's what I saw in my head and that's pretty much what I thought on arriving here! And, the fact that I'm communicating in a foreign language where I can't express myself fully verbally means that I'm having to find other ways of getting across what I need to say. And everyone in France understands "Oh shit..."! This is probably about A3 sized or a bit bigger, and it took me a day to make it, which is very fast for textile work!

After this I reflected and decided I'd like to make another shrine, because I'd started making work about shrines this time last year, but before I came to any sort of conclusion with it I'd been distracted by absract painting and stuff, and my work had become more about discovering new methods of painting. And the textile collages I'd made in the spring were just the very beginning of that side of things too, so to marry the two and make textile shrines seemed like a good way to develop both ideas at the same time. And of course I'm aware that I can't work on everything at once, and that it's a bad idea to just shove two things together that don't go... BUT luckily, these two things really do go hand in hand for me right now. So a textile shrine it is.

And as for who to make the shrine to... Well, I chose Iggy Pop. I'd been thinking of using a French popstar, like Johnny Halliday, but the fact is I don't care about Johnny Halliday at all, so there wouldn't be any interest for me in making the shrine... At the same time, I didn't want to use someone like Marc Bolan, because he's my favourite and it would just feel a bit too close to home, as odd as it is, considering the whole point of shrine is that they're for icons you worship! But the thing is, I don't really worship anyone or anything, and it's difficult enough to explain while speaking, let alone while typing, but I just want to have a bit of distance from the subject... So Iggy Pop is perfect, because I like him a lot, but he's not up there with Sparks or anything. And he's just really appropriate for this particular moment in time - I was listening to Iggy Pop on the way to France and had it in my head for ages, there was a bit of talk about him with some of the girls beforehand, about how we think he's dead cool and all that... And you know, I can't have come all the way to Marseille to make work that I could have made in Peckham, so I've decided to just go with whatever takes me while I'm here.

So, I think it's time for some more pictures.

This is my first sketch of what an Iggy shrine could look like. The shape is taken from pretty much every Virgin Mary shrine I've ever seen, and the gold sun in the middle works like a halo, which I like a lot. And then the fact that it just says "IGGY" rather than "IGGY POP" makes for more of a teenage-girl-in-her-bedroom feel, which I think I quite like too. The other students in my studio have given me some interesting bits of feedback on all this, ranging from how it's very exciting because it's glittery and shiny, it's dead cool because it's iggy pop, it's very girly with all the sewing and fabric, to suggestions for looking into things like Santeria and Mexican/Cuban kitschy Catholic art, to one woman who took quite deep offense to the fact that I was juxtaposing very strong religious themes with someone as disgusting as Iggy Pop - phew! But I'll go into that later!

Anyway, the two religions that interest me the most visually are Christianity and Hinduism, and whereas in England I've been on a bit of a mini quest to make my work look more Hindu/Bollywoodesque, I feel that while I'm in France I should definitely exploit the fact that it's a deeply Catholic country... Regardez:

I made a few sketches in my book, some of which were made before visiting Notre Dame de la Garde, and some were made after. This is an example of a before - somewhere between the Jetsons and the Little Mermaid - good!  Then I went to Notre Dame and saw all this...

All those lovely gold and multicoloured Byzantine style mosaics of birds, flowers, angels, rainows, boats, anchors etc - more like Notre GLAM de la Garde! I went there 4 times in the space of a week - which is dedication considering you have to walk a long way up a very steep hill to get there!)
And so here's an example of an after:

Here I've taken influence from the circular patterns, leaves and colours I saw in the church. I think this is a good one and I like very much that it has a big bit of Marseille in it already, so I decided to use this as the basis for the shrine. What follows are images of the shrine's development so far. I chose the circular format because it feels a lot purer, a lot higher and a lot closer to whatever God is, and technically it's a challenge what with the lack of corners and all...

As usual it's taking me forever to do, and I'm very keen to make something else before the term finishes! Everyone else seems to think it's moving really fast though, but I think that's only because French art students seem to make one brushstroke a week and spend the rest of the time having coffee and fag breaks... But anyway, this is what I'm making! I'll continue to post updates as it progresses. Now I'm going to start a new post and see if I can upload any more pictures...