connyoconnorK00185158

The Tweet box design I did last year became the idea for my new 3rd year self directed brief. Here's the brief I set for myself.

Conny O’Connor – K00185158

3^rd Year Printmaking

Self Directed Brief

My self directed brief is based on the concept that the young generation of today are almost completely dependent on technology. Our youth have become addicted to social networking. Most people up to the age of around twenty five just can’t be without their Iphones or Tablets or Ipads these days. It’s so easy now to check Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tinder, Instagram and multiple other social media. Not so long ago you’d have to wait until you were at a computer to check the internet, now it’s as easy as checking the time on your phone.

As well as this, very few young people will send letters anymore. Talking to somebody in America or Australia from Ireland now is as easy as talking to your friend down the road from you. All it takes is a message on Facebook. Faxes are from the last generation also. I’d be surprised if anyone under sixteen years old knew what a fax was, or a Walkman, or a VCR. Technology has completely taken over, thus making all these things of the past obsolete. Now a smart phone can carry out the functions of all these things and much more combined!

Technology to me seems like a drug these days. Everybody wants, everybody needs it. Kids around eleven or twelve used to start off with a simple phone to keep contact with their parents and friends. Then a phone with a camera came out, then a built in Ipod, then the internet etc. Before long everybody needed access to facebook all the time and the whole generation got hooked. It’s like a simple phone was the gateway drug to fancier technology. Now all it really takes to get a young person to spend an outrageous amount of money on a new phone is to put a higher number in the title (IPhone 4, IPhone 5, IPhone 6 etc).

To top off this entertaining aspect of life, I’ve also come to the conclusion that young people are prisoners to their phones as they’re never free from them. They’re slaves or mindless zombies to their phones because it’s at the point now that the person no longer controls the phone but the phone controls the person. It’s even at the point now where technology has introduced its own language to our way of life. Words like “yolo, lol, soz, totes v defo, prom prom, a9 etc” are all commonplace and are as a result of constant social networking.

I was going for a humorous/childlike approach to the project as I personally find this style of making art quite enjoyable. The 3 main artists I first started looking at were David Shrigley, Jean Jullien and Theresa McCracken. Here's some of their work and why I chose them for inspiration.

Conny O’Connor – K00185158

3^rd Year Printmaking

Artists/Concepts to research

Jean Jullien

Jean Jullien is a French graphic designer who’s currently based in London. He’s attended Quimper in Nantes, Central Saint Martins College and the Royal College of Art in London. He works in a wide variety of media from Illustration, Installations, Photography, Video, Costumes, Posters, Books and even Clothing to create a large body of work. He draws his compositions with thick markers which gives them their cartoon like quality. I love his work because it frees me from the anxiety of needing to spend hours drawing very detailed images. I enjoy the simplicity and entertaining aspects of his work and I can relate to his sense of humour quite well. I also enjoy the subject matter of his work and how he mocks it through his images.

David Shrigley

David Shrigley is a visual artist who’s best known for his bizarre, crude and immensely entertaining drawings. He received a BFA in Glasgow School of Art in 1991 but claims that he’s an outsider in the artworld. He has exhibited widely and has done solo shows all over the place including San Francisco, Glasgow and Copenhagen. Although he recently started encorporating film into his practice, he mostly just puts pen and pencil to paper and draws whatever is going on in his head or the world around him. David Shrigley is my hero and I really love his child like approach to art. I’m a huge fan of the humour he implies and the way he draws with crossed out words, uneven lines, no perspective or attention to detail. Usually in the artworld this would look like criticism but not in this context.

Theresa McCracken

Theresa McCracken is a great inspiration to me. She’s a cartoonist with a unique sense of humour who apparently lives with a few stray animals outside of Waldport, Oregon, USA. She’s also a naturalist, historian and writer but is most well known for her simple yet effective cartoons. She’s done illustrations for many magazines and newspapers including The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post. Theresa aims her work at a wide audience as it’s for everyone to enjoy. She mainly draws her cartoons with pen or pencil. I’m a huge fan of her work. I love her simplistic drawing style, just lines, no shading or much detail at all. It showed me that a drawing doesn’t need to look photo realistic to draw attention and love her approach to adding humour to her work.