Maisie Cousins

On her website is says 'Her approach to making art is hedonistic and performative. She explores themes of power, femininity, nature, technology, the body and indulgence. '

I love Maisie Cousins work and I think it relates to my theme because it's a little bit disgusting but a little bit beautiful? She pushes boundaries on how we view women. The women in her artworks aren't always conventionally beautiful. They're different looking. She presents naked women in beautiful and some what 'sexy' settings but with slimy details like slugs and grass, she confuses our perceptions of beauty with an off putting twist.


"Most of my work stems from a personal place and I guess I’m sick of seeing imagery aimed at me that I cannot in any way relate to. It’s very boring and dishonest. I think it’s important for art to be relatable." - Maisie Cousins 2016

Outsider art influence

I've been watching 'Journeys Into The Outside with Jarvis Cocker', a tv series presented by Jarvis Cocker where he visits various countries such as France and USA to experience the outsider art in the countries. I particularly like the French man who covered his whole how is broken crockery and shells.



Some consider outsider art to be  'art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by those on the outside of the established art scene, such as psychiatric hospital patients and children.'

But also 'the English term "outsider art" is often applied more broadly, to include certain self-taught or naïve art makers who were never institutionalized. Typically, those labeled as outsider artists have little or no contact with the mainstream art world or art institutions.'

I am using Outsider Art as my influence because these women who aren't represented are possibly seen as outsiders to to the glamorous media. It's a good way to express our feelings of neglect through outsider art because a lot of outsider art is never found (possibly found after death) and that could represent that their voices will never particularly be heard.

Here are a few of my favourite outsider art pieces.





I love how raw and bad these pieces are, they are alive and have a presence which classically trained artists cannot emulate!

Focused advertisements - Toothpaste?

I've been looking at Toothpaste advertisements and a lot of them are just women with nice teeth stood next to a tube of toothpaste. I think I've chosen toothpaste to focus on because not all women/people use something like mascara or lipstick, but most people use toothpaste so it's a very universal thing. The women in these advertisements always have very beautiful teeth but not everyone does? Where are the adverts for the women with terrible teeth?

Tracey Owens Patton

Some more advertising/campaign ideas

I've done some visual investigation and tried out with the whole campaign idea. I'm not sure if I 100% like it, I find the slogan thing a little bit cliched and there's only so far I can go with the imagery at this point other than people looking a bit weird. 

I got bored of trying to create characters and stuck with what situation I could put them in so I tried an abstract idea - I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the characters are all different shapes and there's so many of us out there but only one shape is idealised... I don't know. I don't like it but I guess it was fun to draw the shapes.

Proposal

My intentions for my practical work are to try create pieces of work that help represent women who are not represented in traditional advertising. I am investigating how women are perceived, where it be extremely beautiful and there isn't a lot of room for non-conventional looking women. Most  advertisements only include incredibly conventionally beautiful women, who are cis, usually white and heterosexual - I want to try and show there is women beyond that. I am going to look closely at advertisements of cosmetic products because that's where I feel women are mis-represented the most. I want to explore the feelings of women when they don't see themselves in the advertisements.My possible outcomes include creating the work of a fake advertising agency that create their adverts including everyone or a campaign to encourage people to boycott companies if they feel they are not represented within the advertisements.

Focused theme: Backlash against mainstream advertising

I want to create a campaign where women revolt against advertising companies and boycott their products - they don't listen to and buy from companies who use the same tried and tested ways of advertising.

Another thing that really annoys me are advertising companies that use feminism to sell thing to women, such as

• Dove's real beauty campaign
• Cover Girls #GirlsCan
• Unilever (maker of Dove etc) get women to talk about their insecurities that they've created