Named after the scientific phenomenon regarding an object that is impossibly strong from most perspectives but fragile when targeted, this project is an exploration of the male psyche and how melancholia is being increasingly conveyed in more nuanced methods. The masculine experience, in particular, plays a fundamental role in navigating this, with the project beginning with me examining my own experience with the simultaneous delicacy and fortitude that possessing mental disorders involves. This has involved experimentation with a variety of image-making methods and an approach to the depiction of male mental health that emphasises a function on form and the empowerment of the mundane to convey complex topics such as moral crises, anxious compulsions and mania.
A photogrammetric investigation into supernaturality, recognising the bittersweet strengths that sufferers inheret as a result of their conditions.
Bennett’s first introspective analysis of his inner dispostion following a traumatic breakdown during his youth. An honest and vulnerable series that is situated within University accomodation, the envrionment in which he spiralled into a state of unmediated madness. The project acted as a vechicle within which the artist began to externalise his past and decipher his identity as a sufferer of OCD whilst exploring themes of materiality
The memories that we create as children appear the most vivid. The smells, the sights, the sounds and most importantly the fantastical worlds we created for ourselves using our imaginations. Buttercups could indicate if you liked butter, tall plants turned into our own flying broomsticks. Anything was possible. There is an intense tangibility of these sensory overloads, we can recollect the minute details from fleeting moments. Within this project I am investigating the nature of memories associated with childhood play, experimenting with photographic perspective in order to encourage the viewer to recall their own childhood experiences. The book consists of intimate point-of-view shots with the intention of evoking those heavily visceral feelings. I revisited the play parks I used to frequently go to in my youth, traversing my own childhood memories whilst capturing these photographs. Alongside this I attended more contemporary play spaces, which have become more sophisticated in the structures they used to create stronger sensory appeal. The research that has informed this book has revealed the workings of infantile memory, how playground remembrance is entirely positive and how recollection can lead to manipulation of such memories to create a false narrative.
Questioning intention of the creator, of the devices they use and how this manipulates the end consumer.