Research

I have been research Victorian freak shows and conjoined twins to broaden my visual enquiry into doubles.  The think behind this is that doubles and 'other' can become a spectacle, something that holds fascination and disgust at the same time. There is a great website, http://thehumanmarvels.com

which unfortunately has been removed temporarily. There I found a whole host of Victorian human attractions including many multi limbed people, humans likened to animals and Mary Ann Bevan, 'the ugliest woman in the world'. http://www.sideshowworld.com/ has also got some good documentary photographs of circus and sideshows. During our group chat, they suggested that I look at the Tree Man...

I find this fascinating but also repulsive and found it very difficult to stop looking at. I want to recreate this type of attention holding effect with my own work.

I also found http://weimarart.blogspot.com/2011/06/twins-triplets.html which has a fantastic array of pairings from films, artist's work and street photography. I love the images with identical dress and where the two figures are linked in some way - often by the hair. I am particularly interested in Mary Ellen Mark, Ruud van Empel and Ariko Inaoka 

I am investigating photographers and collage artists at the moment rather than painters as this stage of my exploratory project is more concerned with rapid construction of images.

I am currently using books and websites for reference, including Cutting Edges, Doppelganger, 1000 Artist Trading Card (for scale).

Reflection

So far I have tried to look at a broad range of sources but I still feel that I need more primary source research, probably through photography. I enjoy the sameness of the pairs but think they should have a physical link in some way to accentuate them sharing something. The images from my research seem to fall into two catagories, very bright, vivid images with nature and more vintage/black and white pieces. This is probably because of the way I paint - using lots of sweet colours to attract the eye. When I make my collages I intend to investigate both colour ways, with the idea of making paintings from some of the experiments.