Is This The Best We Can Do?

This is the final piece for the Art of Protest segment as part of the Dialouge Ignites Change brief.  This was really just born out of an idea that just came to me whilst thinking about the words of George Carlin and the current state of our political system if not the human condition. I don't like protest art that looks whiney and that usually is the case for me when I see such things, instead I was more inspired by Banksy and settled for this image for its cynical and anarchistic tone.

I was experimenting in a way that I could blend spray can with brush and pen techniques so to capture those mark making qualities but for what came out from it I think Screen Printing is really the way things of this style should be done, also this image here is a reproduction of the one I handed in and took longer than a Screen Print would to produce.

Below is a clip from George Carlin's 'Back in Town' tour and album, note how he says "this is the best we can do folks".

Dialogue Ignites Change (A Self Evaluation)

As part of my 'Dialogue Ignites Change' project I decided to work with Age UK where I would make an illustration based on the memories of an elderly person who may have dementia. I chose this because it's quite simply a personal reason to me, and I feel the best work in life is done with such reasons.

(Above: A man by the name of Pete was one of the few I spoken to, he shared a memory of this place that I took a photo of this week, it's a place where 'Rag and Bone' men would roam by and Pram Races set, so I'm thinking that's how this place should be illustrated, as if it were a set, or a stage of memory).

The most difficult part of this was coming to terms with my sense of efficiency, it takes a lot of patience to have a conversation with a dementia sufferer and although I can be a patient person I was in a situation where I only had a moment to talk and it dawned on me there that it is important to have compromise, stringing a coherent sentence out of them was far and foremost the most difficult thing to do with these people but what I learned was that a little persistence isn't bad if you keep reminding yourself what you want, if I couldn't get what I wanted after going round in circles with the person I had to respectfully walk away and look elsewhere. It's a philosophy I seriously need to apply to how I work.

(Below: Now known as The Queen's Head, this place would have been remembered under the name Turners Vaults by Pete, this photo was found through a search of an online archive, looking at how the world use to look by browsing these archives gives me an undescribable sense of discovery and pleasure)

From the work I've shown there wasn't a lot of feedback, which is good because people know what my goal is with this image. It's only a bad thing because there's hardly anything to comment on.

The project was a challenge due to my bad time keeping (still haven't slept since yesterday morning) however when I think about the opportunity I have had in this one breif I sense a profound resonance. For a moment I was lost in another person's world that use to be somebody else's at one time and I hope my work creates that feeling for another.