I have reviewed all of the work I have done for this project and conceptually tied everything together to explain my work.
The theme of
my work explores the concept of the influence. We are all influenced by a
matrix of personal and societal pressures some which we can control and others
which are beyond our control. Influence is the effect of something or someone
on an individual it is the power to sway by means of argument, by example, or
force of personality.
This work
explores the theme of influence and is in turn influenced by the remarks of Oscar
Wilde who states in The Picture of Dorian Gray that “Influence is simply
transference of personality, a mode of giving away what is most precious to
one’s self. To influence a person is to
give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with
his natural passions. He becomes an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a
part that has not been written for him.”
Through my
work I have been considering influence and its effects on the individual from
the perspective of both the influencer and the influenced and also focusing on the
action of influencing and the resulting reaction. I am interested in the dual
aspect and contradiction of influence to which Wilde refers because if we are
influenced by and in turn the influencer of others, we experience both loss and
gain and that which is both natural and unnatural to us.
Harold
Bloom explains the reaction of the individual to influence as causing anxiety
in his book The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry and my work attempts
to explore these reactions with the pieces either influencing each other or generated
as a reaction to the concept.
The main aim of my work is encourage the viewer to analyse their own
position within society and their relationship with others. It invites the
audience to consider concept of influence and reflect on whose echo we are or
if we are an actor in the part written for us or if we are playing someone
else’s role.
