Rachel's Sketchbook: Assignment 2: Mental Map

In your sketchbook, assemble ten (10) images, books, films, or even music/songs that provide a history and context for your current work or interests in art, animation and/or gaming, whether as a practitioner, viewer or player/participant. Choose works that are important to the way you think, and just as importantly, works that inspire you in ways that you can’t always perhaps put into words. Reach back into your childhood (where you may perhaps find some unexpected sources of inspiration) and look around you to collect some contemporary resources. (This assignment is particularly well-suited to a digital sketchbook, like a Tumblr or blog, but as before, if you are posting content that is not your own, please cite where you retrieved each image with a link.) Sequence your images/items in a way that makes sense to you, chronologically or thematically or some other way.

My current practice involves manipulating the historic values of photographs to create fictional histories. I am looking at a lot of artists that are re-creating historical scenes and artists that are creating fictional realities. I am also interesting in artists who lie about their work; so that what is fact and what is fiction is questioned by the viewer, making the artist an untrustworthy authority.

I am also influenced by family history and storytelling, particularlly stories of relatives pasted down verbally from generation to generation. These stories, due to time, lose details, names and places. Although the essence of the stories remain, the facts have been forgotten, sometimes to the point where you begin to question if the stories have now become a work of fiction.

The following currently inspire my current work.