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This statement was created as a part of my pre-MFA show documentation, and is based on an interview done by my fellow artist and friend Leigha Dugdale

 

I have been working with collage since 2008, and I decided to further explore the potential of it as a medium, especially given my recent research into the concepts of self-deception and the uncanny.  Collage is an excellent medium for this, given that it is engendered by the unexpected juxtaposition of otherwise familiar elements.  I also wanted to continue discussing my own experiences within my work, and I decided to focus on mental illness.

 

I grew up overshadowed by mental illness, and I understand what it is to be both mentally ill myself and to have a mentally ill family member, and I decided to approach this by considering the forest of Aokigahara in Japan.

 

Aokigahara is infamous as a suicide spot and legends have inevitably sprung up about evil spirits luring people in and then deliberately driving them to despair or getting them inexorably lost.  This interests me as an example of the human capacity and desire for self-deception, even when it involves embracing the existence of demonic forces; it is easier to believe that your loved one was lured to their deaths by some evil power than to admit that they killed themselves.  Demos discussed self-deception in "Lying to Oneself" as dishonesty, only serving to create conflict in the deceiver, in that belief and disbelief exist simultaneously.  David Lynch's "Twin Peaks" shares similar themes; however frightening the prospect of sharing your world with powerful, remorseless evil, it is preferable to believing a man could rape and murder his daughter, because if a man could do that, then by extension so could you.  The fantasy is far more palatable than the truth, and it therefore propagates itself relentlessly. 

 

I juxtaposed images from X-Files comics with photographs from Aokigahara's suicide scenes, the comics adding levity and offsetting the photographs' dark reality with non-threatening images from a source associated with childhood, fantasy, and entertainment.  My choice of X-Files comics partly relates to my interest in the personal (all the comics were taken from my personal collection), but also refers to the supernatural nature of stories surrounding Aokigahara. 

 

My choice of Agent Scully is also significant; I grew up identifying with her, and that as well as our physical resemblance meant I could use her as a surrogate for myself.   I love Tracey Emin's work, in particular her ability to place herself completely into it.  I find ways to insert myself into my work, while still keeping a distance; in this case, through using Agent Scully as a surrogate.  By placing her in Aokigahara in an investigative capacity, I am seeking answers about me and my family member's mental problems, as well as addressing the uncanny; it also allowed me to insert myself without disrupting the relationship between comics and forest and the presentation of paranormal and reality together with nothing to differentiate the two beyond what you know - or believe you know - to be true. 

 

Shortly after this, I was watching a documentary about American Airlines 191  This crash already interested me, partly because it was the first plane crash to capture the public's imagination, largely due to the new media technologies developing at the time.  A photograph of the plane in an unrecoverable bank spread around the world, and the resulting interest destroyed the reputation of the DC-10.  The ATC query of "American 191 heavy, you wanna come back?" was what really caught my interest, though.  It interested me because it was so simple, but conveyed so much; the crew did want to come back, but they were incapable of keeping their aircraft aloft even long enough to answer, too busy attempting to stop the impending catastrophe to reply.

 

I decided to make a collage about flight 191, exploring the role the media and worldwide dissemination of information played in the public's reaction to the disaster.  My first collage, recreating the famous photograph from a different angle, was flat, composed of images from brochures, comics, magazines, and design schematics.  Although I liked it, I wanted to play up the collage as an object more, using scalpel and glue over Photoshop for this very reason.  I started using corrugated card to build up each layer, adding depth and texture and turning the collage into a 3D sculpture.  I chose double-wall corrugated card because it was thicker and had an extra layer of corrugation, which added further interest and contrast between layers when viewed from the side or from above/below.  "American 191 heavy, you wanna come back?" was the title. 

 

I felt this collage was very successful and decided to make more, using CVR/ATC recordings as titles and extending corrugated card layering to the landscape and sky itself.  For example, "Identified traffic 12 o'clock, reciprocal Saudia Boeing 747, 10 miles. Report in sight" consists of a background sky level (from a Constable painting), a level of clouds (from a Constable painting), a level of grass (from a brochure about India, where the accident happened), another level of grass (from a comic), and the planes themselves (from aviation postcards) pasted onto corrugated card and stuck onto the sky.

 

This combination of different image sources, and use of familiar imagery (for example, Old Masters, or comics) is a further investigation of the power of the uncanny.  In their paper "When is the Unfamiliar the Uncanny", Proulx et al. exposed respondents to unexpected juxtapositions of familiar objects before administering psychological tests to gauge their reactions, and found subjects to have become demonstrably unsettled.  I wanted to evoke this in my collages, with the odd levity conferred by the use of the comics contrasting with the nervous unsettlement engendered by their proximity to established unrelated imagery such as Constable paintings or brochure images of Benidorm.  By combining different sources of material in each collage, I reflect the way people take aspects of reporting from dozens of sources in creating their own truths and perception of events, rather than accepting newspapers as gospel.

 

Importantly, the personal is there - my grandfather was a pilot, and he told me stories about his travels and his life during his career.  He said to understand how something worked, you had to know what happened when it didn't, and aviation disasters have been a lifelong interest.  I would have liked to become a pilot but was medically disqualified, and my work also relates to that - an expression of frustration through obsessive documentation and reimagining of childhood memories and associations, but in a dispassionate and unattached way; all collages are rooted in fact and an equally obsessive attention to detail.

 

Each scene created is carefully composed and researched to be factually accurate.  Using data from reports, I calculated the correct angles of planes in flight (eg the inverted bank of Alaska Airlines 261 in "Here we go"), or impact damage (eg the torn-off roof of Pan Am flight 1736 in "Goddamn, that son-of-a-bitch is coming straight at us!"), or wreckage patterns (eg the disintegration of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in "I see a huge fire on the ground").  I also researched aircraft models and liveries for each piece.  This focus on factual accuracy, alongside the CVR/ATC recordings, is essential in that it grounds the otherwise surreal images firmly in reality.

 

Despite the importance of having the titles with each piece, I was also aware of potential difficulties with presentation.  Each collage is so delicate that any conflict or competition between them, or between them and any titles, would seriously detract from them, and I decided to present the titles on vinyl, on a separate wall to the collages, printing a map of the grid for the viewer to refer to.  I used Helvetica for the titles because it is the standard font used on safety cards.  I displayed the collages a minimum of 20cm apart to allow them to speak for themselves as well as in a group, rather than risk them being lost in clutter.

 

I also produced a booklet of information on each incident, showing dates, victims, etc., with each description headed by the collage's title.  This is part of my desire for factual accuracy, as well as to further ground each collage in reality, emphasising the contrast between the images' levity and the dark nature of the reality they depict.

 

In conclusion, my disaster collages are intended the same way as my Aokigahara collages.  I aim to bring lightness to horrific things - on the one hand making dark events more palatable, but and on the other unsettling people more than if the whole image had been horrific rather than just elements of it.  This contrast fascinates me, and I intend to explore it further.  Most importantly, my work is an effort to understand and express my experiences to others, which has always been (and continues to be) the central driving force in my work.

 

 

 

References:

 

 

 

Demos, Raphael (1960).  Lying to Oneself.  The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 57, No. 18 (Sep. 1, 1960), pp. 588-595

 

Proulx, T, Heine, S. J., and Vohs, K (2010).  When is the Unfamiliar the Uncanny?  Meaning Affirmation After Exposure to Absurdist Literature, Humour, and Art.  Personal and Social Psychology Bulletin 2010; 36; 817.

http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/36/6/817

 

Shultz, T. R. (1972). The role of incongruity and resolution in chil-

dren’s appreciation of cartoon humour. Journal of Experimental

Child Psychology, 13, 445-477.

 

Todd, George F (1983).  Art and the Concept of Art.  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Dec., 1983) pp. 255-270

 

 

 

National Transportation Safety Board Aircraft Accident Report; NTSB-AAR-79-17, NTISUB/E/104-017

 

 

 

Rob Gilhooly (2011).  "Inside Japan's 'Suicide Forest'".  Japan Times, June 26, 2011.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2011/06/26/general/inside-japans-suicide-forest/

 

"Studio 360: Suicide Forest."  Studio 360 in Japan (radio programme.)  January 8, 2010.

 http://www.studio360.org/episodes/2010/01/08

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