Patricia Morrissey

Began her photography career as an archiver at the Irish Independent.  Influence of Diana Arbon. First work was a series of twins. The idea of motif,  something continuous in her work. Looked at classical art forms,  Durer's Christlike portrait causing controversy. She thereafter began taking photographs of women with facial hair - quiet a taboo aesthetic.  She put an article requesting models with a humorous approach. A wanted ad turned into a feature on the paper. 40 models and used 12. Using anovijet she printed poster sized print.

After a short career in commercial photography she underwent an MA. She wanted to escape the commercial world although she learned a lot from it. She was interested in the family unit as a construction. Photo therapy for Patricia. Her parents would have bent over backwards for her. She would create a scenario and then she would change it s little to suit.

Doors shutting in and out. Relation to family in some real or realistic form.

Organising photograph's of her family from her grandparents using the knowledge of their dress.

Gertrude Stein. Photographs constructed to the poetry. Semi camouflage. ...hiding identity.

7 year's. Sibling experience.  As a family the parents impose an identity on their children. . Not matter what you do in your adult life you return to the family into those roles. Family album provides a rich version of the families life. Subconscious often leaks onto the photograph. Snaps follow culture. To prevent the usual. Fake family album depicting the sisters as all the roles. Hidden gestures.

Romanticism of young girls dressing up in their mothers clothing..the fantasy of the future.

Film. The boundaries of photography and the lack.  Moving photographs as opposed to film footage. Drab surroundings and the typical animosity.

Body language and the physical and natural state. A moment in time rather than a place.  'FRONT' Idea of motherhood. 

Between four and six years old...a child has a flawed understanding of the particular objects and forms.

www.trishmorrissey.com

Workshop 2 reflection

The aim of the second workshop was to evolve my approach and deepen the level of enquiry, triggering sensitive emotions to discover the inner psyche.

This weeks meditation began as the previous ensuring a vine of continuation. However due to the very expressive emotions in the dialogue, I ensured only one situation was explored. This week I wanted to look at the introduction of a person feared into the dialogue. Allowing an internal conversation with a persona that we hate causes distress and using this distress to illustrate and combine this with that of another alternative yet individually personal persona. This adapted into the interpreted representation enforces or at least helps the raw physical representation on camera.

After the meditation I began to work on illustrating this through perfomance interaction. Paired up, I used a partician between the two models. The model behind the partician was represented soley by shadow. I have a number of reasons for this. This first being the the camouflaging of the figure, removing the identity of the model. A reason for this was to

TO BE CONTINUED

Understanding mentality

ADDICTION, ADDICTION

PAST, BEFORE PRESENT, FUTURE AFTER PAST

CONSTANT INTERSECTION & REPETITION

LIFE CONTINUES

Sigmund Freud 1.1

'A twenty-four-year-old man preserved the following picture from the fifth year of his life: In the garden

of a summer-house he sat on a stool next to his aunt, who was engaged in teaching him the alphabet. He

found difficulty in distinguishing the letter m from n, and he begged his aunt to tell him how to tell one

from the other. His aunt called his attention to the fact that the letter m had one whole portion (a stroke)

more than the letter n. There was no reason to dispute the reliability of this childhood recollection; its

meaning, however, was discovered only later, when it showed itself to be the symbolic representation of

another boyish inquisitiveness. For just as he wanted to know [p. 66] the difference between m and n at that

time so he concerned himself later about the difference between boy and girl, and he would have willing

that just this aunt should be his teacher. He also discovered that the difference similar one; that the boy

again had one portion more than the girl, and at the time of this recognition his memory awoke to the

responding childish inquisitiveness.'

Psychopathology of Everyday Life by Sigmund Freud (1901)

Workshop 1 Report

My first workshop took place yesterday, Monday the 8th of October at Crawford College of Art and Design main campus in the Photography Studio. There was six participants present including four females and two males.

Prior to the beginning of the workshop I had prepared a process method schedule, a short choreographed warm up, meditation dialogue and calm music. The reasoning for this was to ensure the smooth running of the workshop. All lights were set up in a very comfortable way. The room was very quiet and all that could be heard is the piano music playing softly in the background. This was playing before people entered the room. Six chairs were laid out in an equal positioning allowing space for the movement exercise and also allowing each participant to be present in the frame of the camera.

Participants arrived at different intervals between 6.50pm and 7.05pm. In the future, I will wait for everyone to arrive before they can enter the performance space.

I began the workshop with a little introduction whilst keeping the grounds as vague as possible. Each participant signed a release form. I described the schedule of events up to the end of the dialogue meditation.

I then continued with the exercise. The goal of this was to relax the body and its muscles and zone the minds of the models into a comfortable and blank canvas focusing them for the following exercise.

I found that as I was speaking in the same tone from the very beginning, the music was uniform and the lighting didn't change, concentration was kept and the progression was smooth and effective.

During the course of the dialogue there was very little movement and even less sound. Through the distressing parts of the dialogue reaction was minimal however I will inspect this further with the recording.

On awakening the models all gave me the impression that they were totally zoned out. The time went comfortably and reached about 7.35 at this point.

I then gave out a blank sheet with a crayon of their choice to every participant and gave them a few minutes to draw anything that came into their mind. After doing the exercise I asked participants to turn them face down and passed them along to the end.

Thereafter I cleared the room and began the improvisation part of the workshop. Everyone left the room and individually I gave characters to the participants concluding in a family structure. I began with small scenarios to get the building of the characters and it developed greatly with the evolution of time.

Maud Cotter's - ' ..solution in the room'

Upon entering Maud Cotter's 'A Solution in the Room', though it was raining heavily outside, I felt like I was walking into spring. The installations created by Cotter are very delicate looking sculptures that were built to encapsulate the space of the Wandesford Quay Gallery, Cork. The main feature of the 'Sieve' stood in the centre of the space lying on the floor. To the naked eye it looked as though it was an object of that nature in that is gathered material however for me it retained the beauty just like that of an actual sieve; it sieved away the badness. Without looking at the notebooks, the works spoke simply to me with a smile.

Tutorial development 1

IAfter a very positive and constructive tutorial with Jessie Jones last week, I went off to get something cohesive on paper. After disaster with the booking of rooms in college, my scheduling went up in a heap but all I can say is that everything happens for a reason. I now have scripted a concise dialogue for my first meditation workshop. The aim is to develop the dialogue throughout the workshop in acknowledgement to the ongoing motion and body language of the participants. The workshop will be recorded - the camera will remain static at all times with the lens open to allow a full focus of the entire body.

After this workshop I want to experiment with the dialogue and see if it worked well. I want to eventually experiment with the combination of the scenarios in actuality and the silent response brought forward by the participants at the workshop.

Thematically I will be dealing with the concept of family relationships. The language of the script will be very ambiguous. It will be driven by emotional triggers.

Having has a follow through tutorial with Tony McClure, I am now in a good position to go forward with my first experiment and look forward to having something visual by next week!