A change of direction...

I have recently taken some photographs of my Dad's surprise 50th birthday party and since, I have had some interesting thoughts surrounding some of the pictures. Despite the fact I was initially looking at the photographs considering my Dad's personality and his reaction to the surprise, it was a picture of my Dad and all his brothers stood side by side which caught my interest. I was intrigued at how different all the brothers were, despite being brought up in the same environment with the same parents. I was also interested because it got me considering how I only really know my Uncles as Uncles, same with my Dad, not so much as people with personalities and journeys. In fact, I only know them from a certain time in their lives, I know very little about them from before I was born.

 

This really got me thinking more in depth on a broader scale about how there are so many people in the world around us, on an everyday basis who we know very little about. People who pass us in the street, some who we may see everyday, yet we know nothing about them, their story, their personality, their journey and we never really have the time to stop and find out. This concept became clearer during one of my shifts where I work in a shop every Saturday. I began thinking about customers who come in, at the same time, every Saturday and buy the same thing and I realised that...that was all I knew about them. I also picked up on the amount of people I served rushing around, wearing headphones and /or on a mobile phone, they had no interest or time to talk to me or anyone around them. Another thing I noticed was the amount of people who came through the shop, walked straight passed each other without any sort of acknowledgement. Everyone just seemed far too busy to stop and talk to one another.

This idea that our world is full of such a variety of people with different experiences, personalities and stories, but people rarely stop and talk to one another is really interesting. This is a route which I would really like to take my work down. I would like to create a piece of work which is an attempt at making a step forward to getting people more involved in one another. I think that my work should invite people in, in some way, letting them know I am interested in them and their lives. Ultimately, I want my work to reach out to people and I feel an interactive work of art would be the perfect approach.

The image of my Dad and his Brothers which sparked the new direction for my work.