Click on the part of the Artwork to be taken to explanation.
435 The constricting force.
1.
The image at bottom right is a copy of a 1479 A.D. woodcut depicting Nero and Popea made by Anton Sorg.
2.
The writing at top is a comment made by one of Dr. Harold Shipman's patients who was talking about how they felt about him before they found out he was a serial killer who murdered his patients.The text reads: "you knew that when you were with Fred that you were safe"
3.
The number 435 refers to the amount of people, men and women, who were executed by Albert Pierrepoint. Albert Pierrepoint was the most prolific executioner in england and also the third of his family to become an executioner (His father and uncle were also executioners). He is not considered a murderer even though he killed hundreds of people.
4.
The writing at right is latin and it means: The wild beasts stopped being seen and possessed. The text reads: Bestiae videri et possideri desinunt.
5.
The image in the middle is a Wrought iron swastika on a church in Stillingfleet, North Yorkshire which dates from a late-midieval period.
6.
The picture on the right is a depiction of a boy who has CATSHL syndrome. The syndrome is characterized by elongated limbs and gnarled-like fingers and toes.
7.
Below left is a picture of a man who hanged himself with a belt from a fencepost whilst sitting. Text reads: The constricting force being applied indirectly to the ligature, through the weight of the body.
8.
The writing at the bottom is english directly written into armharic and it reads: Hypochondriac.
In this series of Artworks I have played around with the aesthetics of the macabre.My main concern was to illustrate how absurd reality has been in the past.In the future when we take our own reality out of context, things will also seem absurd, even the everyday normal things. I have tried to show how normal the absurd is , when I started this project I was struck by the absurdity of all the images depicted but being subjected to them for a long period of time they have become my norm .So one could say that I have been conditioned and desensitized.
