Work, concepts and practice in motion pt1

Is what I am doing original? Is it new or fresh, or am I mastering that which has been mastered a thousand times before? If it has already been done should I bother? Is it worth it to see the same thing done just by me or with my “spin” on it?

 As you can see this is a thought process that spirals quickly. However I try to avoid the doom part of this spiral as it will do little for my mental health or creative practice. But it is important to me that my work is original, both in the techniques I’m using and the concept and aesthetics of the outcome.

 When I started Uncontrolled Abstraction, I was thinking a lot about my practice. Am I working in a new way, has anyone done this before? Artists have been using explosives to create for a while now. I was inspired by Cai Guo-Qiang a Chinese artist who uses gunpowder to create his paintings. This was years before I started my current practice and I was looking for different ways to approach photography. Unfortunately (or probably yes fortunately) gunpowder is not readily available to random crazy artists in the UK, but it was always in the back of my head. It took a while but one day I was going over some things and I came across a few ideas and it just clicked that, hey that might work, I can blow up my negatives that way. In my head I envisioned swirling impact points with materials and shadows jetting out. And that is exactly what I got, maybe not entirely as I envisioned but the action created movement, shadows, textures and effects that were detailed and focused.

 So now probably eight or more years after the original thought of using explosions, I came up with an actual way to make it work, in a way that is entirely my own. And it’s legal just to make that clear!