I have chosen my theme to be Anxiety. I have chosen this subject because it's something that I have personally been through and I think I could find it easy to research and talk about. The only thing I'm struggling with thinking about for this is I don't know what I could take photograph's of. I know that there are different ways that others experience it and cope with it and would be interesting to find out about the other ways. I think it would be interesting to see others experiences with it. I have overcome my anxiety that I was experiencing in years 9-10 of secondary school and I think that this would be a personal subject to talk about.
What medium's will I be using?
I think I will be using photography to take images of things to display anxiety. I will be using creative crafts to make things to illustrate what Anxiety could look like and how I could show what Anxiety make someone feel like. I have an idea to photograph someone with there head on the table looking miserable and then photoshop word's around the person's head to show what they're thinking and what is on there mind. I have another idea to draw faces onto some egg's and leave one looking different to illustrate that the one different egg feel's like the odd one out and doesnt feel like the rest. I also have an idea with mask's but I dont know if im going to proceed with this idea.
How I want my work to look?
I want my work to be a mix up of posters to show what anxiety looks like. I was thinking about using two different character's but within one person. For example you would have the person who everybody see's on the outside of a person and then another character for what the person is actually feeling like what nobody see's. I want to show that even thought that a person could display that they're happy. They could be inside feeling a different way that they never want others to see. I want to show what a person with anxiety could be thinking. I want to show in general a few picture images of different sides of a person. I want to come up with a way to show the fight or flight situation that people with anxiety go through and how hard it could be to flight or fight. I want to show that either flight or fight is as hard as each other. I want to show the barriers that someone would have to take in order to fight and flight. For showing that again I will create two different characters in mind like the devil and angel thing. I will have one persuading to flight or one persuading to fight and just show the thoughts that a person would think whilst choosing between the decision's.
Images I used for inspiration
I have found these images and I will explain why I am using them for inspiration.
This one I am using as I find it powerful that it is showing the person's thoughts and I could combine this with the flight or fight idea. I could create two characters to go either side of my own photography like this and use the devil and angel idea but put my characters being on either side and I would name my characters fight and flight. I would show what they are both trying to persuade to get out of a situation that someone with anxiety doesn't feel comfortable with. For example if someone was to want to ask a teacher a question in class because they was stuck with the work. I could show the flight side telling her what would happen if she leaves the situation shes in so I could illustrate flight saying that if she doesn't ask then she wouldn't then understand the work and would fall behind and that the person is going to struggle with the work in silence. It's showing that flight could in general be a negative option to take. Then I could show fight saying things like 'if you ask you will understand the work and be able to carry on', 'you won't be falling behind on work'. This would be showing that fight in general could be more positive than flight. I will try and illustrate this by using this theme but different. Here is a picture if you didn't understand the structure I want to use for this below.
This image with the egg's is something I would be creating in my own time with creative craft's. I explained that I would want to show with this that someone with anxiety feels like they're odd and completely different to others with how there emotions are. I would be using no more than a carton of eggs and a felt tip pen just to draw faces on each egg and draw one different.
How I will present my work:
Presentation:
Slide 1- This will display my name and my topic.
Slide 2- What is Anxiety? Different forms, Fact's about Anxiety.
Slide 3- Symptoms of Anxiety. Including Egg image explaining about how they feel like they're the odd one out.
Slide 4- Flight or fight.
Slide 5- Is Anxiety a serious mental health problem?
Slide 6- Help line's, Helping with Anxiety
Slide 7- Artist
Slide 8- Recap
Slide 9- Ending slide.
Image Posters:
I will present my egg image with my symptoms slide of information. I will firstly explain how a person whilst feeling Anxious would immediately feel odd and different to the rest. I would be presenting this image along side with the symptoms of Anxiety and what someone may feel whilst feeling anxious.
I will present my next image with my flight and fight slide which will be the image with the idea of the shoulder angel and shoulder devil idea but only Id change it and create two different character's and they would each represent fight and flight. I would be inserting my own photography of a person holding their face in both hands and I would then have each character on either side of the persons shoulder. I am then going to insert a title which would be the situation that the person is in. I would then have flight discussing what would happen if this person decides to flight from it and then fight also saying what would happen if they fight the situation. This would look like to others that a person's mind fights with itself over the littlest things and how the mind tries to persuade itself.
For the last image I would have split it in half and duplicate the same image on each side but only the right will be different in a way to the left side. I will on the left side sub title this with ' What it may look like' and I would then have a simple classroom situation. I would have people sat looking at this person, people in groups looking at the person, the teacher, etc. I would then write thinking bubbles of what others are thinking whilst looking at this person, positive thoughts with thoughts that the person would not be thinking, for example 'wonder what this person's going to say.' whereas the right side will be sub titled 'what they actually see' and will have the people looking at this person thinking bad thought's for example 'oh look the shy one's finally going to speak' ' why her legs shaking the weirdo, its not even cold in here' 'her/his breath probably smell's, why they never talk.'
Artist Research:
https://uk.pinterest.com/rainephillips/mental-state/
Artist name : Raine Phillips
A few images of his artwork on Anxiety:
Schedule:
Blurb:
My opinions on Anxiety is that I know it can be a hard condition to deal with as it affects people mentally and physically. I have had close friends dealing with it in ways that was different to mine. I have had family members dealing with it. I have had a friend that dealt with her Anxiety along side of a food disorder, she was very shy and had general Anxiety about eating in front of people and forever feeling like she was fat because of her past but she lost loads and loads of weight because of it and became anorexic. I had someone in one of my classes that her voice level of speech was very quiet even when talking to people she had known since she was little. She couldn't speak in front of anybody, couldn't really manage without her friend by her side and from me knowing her in the past she used to be popular and bubbly but because of Anxiety it affected her in general. My personal experience with it was that I didn't know I was going through it because I thought that I couldn't be going through something like that as I'd say I was out going and I wasn't really afraid of talking to anyone or anything because I was close to everyone in school. I started getting chest pains and loss of confidence and I would experience the same feeling at a certain time of a certain day so it must have all matched up to something. I realised it was because I didn't feel good enough at the lesson I had at that certain time and that was GCSE PE. I wasn't as good at the sports as everyone else in the class which was what started to trigger it all. It got worse as time went on that I used to skip the class and refuse to join in so eventually the teachers decided to take me off the course because I couldn't handle it. I also made it worse for myself because I didn't really talk about it to anyone as I was embarrassed by it so I faced it alone. My mum knew but I never wanted to talk or open up to her about it because I just wanted to block it all out and pretend it was nothing. I then started to feel not good enough out in public on my own, like everyone was judging me. I used to physically throw up the same colour vomit every time I was out and I would have to lay or sit down to get rid of the uncomfortable cramps. I used to use the flight method for everything but then things changed as I started to fight things and honestly not care about anything. I learnt that the only way to get around those situations is to fight and not rely on others because there is only you that can make it better.
