Responding to Human Rights

Close up of Research 1
By Jo Howell 2011

As part of the project with Arcadea Disability Arts, and The British Institute of Human Rights, I will be delivering a workshop tomorrow with my group to help raise awareness about The Human Rights Act and its importance. This is the workshop where I will be using Polaroid film to inspire the participants to make a creative response to the subject, so I am very excited to see what kind of results tomorrows workshop will have! (See Perfectly Polaroid blog entry.)

We have also been given a budget and asked to create out own artistic response to the project that will be shown in the Centre for Life, Newcastle on 10th December 2011. I have decided to include the processes that I am using to produce the work in this blog to give loyal readers a sneak peek, and as a sort of "work in progress" journal for myself.

Close up of Research 2
By Jo Howell 2011

I began by taking photographs of the pieces of research that are the most relevant or interesting. I re-photograph images and text so that I can carefully control whats in focus, what's out of focus, lighting and framing. Re-photography is not only a tool for highlighting the parts that I don't want you to miss, it is a form of appropriating artwork or articles from the media into my own work, using iconography that you may already have seen or have some understanding of. Thank you Richard Prince!

Corner Detail Layer 1
By Jo Howell 2011

I then apply the images to the canvas to create a large collage, I encourage a certain amount of bubbles and folds in the process to create more texture as the other layers are built up. The initial layer is an overwhelming collection of carefully butted-up, over-lapped and juxtaposed images to create an intense and information rich background texture.

Layer 1 BIHR Project
By Jo Howell

After a full night of drying whilst carefully weighted the canvas is ready to have paint applied to it. Each separate layer will need to be dried completely before the next is applied.

Layer 2 BIHR Project
By Jo Howell

To make the image feel enclosed, framed, or as one coherent image I roughly apply a black acrylic outline to each edge. This will also add a prominent shadow to any folds or bubbles so they will show up better in layer 3, and it hides the joins of the paper for a cleaner edge.

There will be more to come in the next few days with images from the workshop and more of the work as it progresses...

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