(no images downloaded yet)
# Project Description Falling Angels Arthur Finch (Julius Finck) Summary Final work Julius Arthur Finck, also known by his professional name Arthur Finch, is an emerging image maker from Berlin, currently based in London.Following a year long effort supporting a peace-making intiative in Israel and Palestine, Finch discovered his passion for photography and began using it as a medium to express himself. His captivating work has since gained significant recognition from both the commercial and fine art communities. Julius Arthur Finck, also known by his professional name Arthur Finch, is an emerging image maker... College London College of Communication Course BA (Hons) Photography Graduation year 2023 Fallen Angels is an experimental fashion concept that explores how the poetics of fashion practice can be used to show notions about the clash of the organic and the artificial throughout human evolution. Final work Falling Angels Layout View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery View Gallery Research and process Critical Rational and Research Taking cues from British Photographer Nick Knight’s history with experimental fashion story telling, the work combines performance, still life constructions and avant grade costume design to translate narratives about technology, the organic, art and religion. ‘Falling Angels’ is inspired by this detachment of fashion from branding and consumer marketing and its evolution into a practice informed by ‘poetic visual experiences’ that play with ‘ambiguity, or disrupted meanings’ (Lee, 2014). In works from surrealist like Man Ray, this idea has been transformed to imagery that changed the history of art. The surrealists were heavily inspired by fashion, and the other way around, and often collaborated with designers. An example of this is Man Ray’s lifelong collaboration with Elsa Schiaparelli. On several occasions, he photographed the designer herself, like in Minotaure ’s October-December 1933. In the image, one can see Schiaparelli standing behind the sculpture of a female torso wearing a silver wig. The sculpture, a symbol for a dressmaker’s mannequin, together with Schiaparelli, allow for the ‘radical act of decontextualisation’ (Crawforth, 2004) and change the image from a commercialised fashion image to a piece of art. Others would disagree, Susan Sontag writes in “On Photography” that surrealist photographers ‘count as little today as the nineteenth-century pictorial photographers’ (Sontag, 2001) and argues that surrealist images were absorbed by the commercial world of fashion, which she has a clear dislike for. Designed to reach artists rather than consumer audiences, the ShowStudio.com platform too created an open call for emerging visual artists to ‘push the boundaries of communicating fashion’ in a way that created a new age gallery space for digital content and image-making. The platform allows for the publishing of work that is inherently experimental and revolutionises the way fashion and fine art image/video making can combine. Nick Knight, the founder of ShowStudio, shows how the development of fashion project can use artistic processes in his work ‘Blade of Light’ which he did in collaboration with the fashion designer Alexander McQueen. He took inspiration from the tradition of tableaux painting, and applies it into a photographic context. By doing that, he allows notions of religion and destruction (Knight, 2015) to enter the work and elevate it to a degree that it is now not just one of his most famous and influential pieces of work but it also shown in a gallery context, and is therefore part of the conversations of fine art photography. Fallen Angels responds to this area of innovation in fashion and art practice. Working alongside undergraduate Wimbledon costume designer Dan Campton, whose work is known for pushing the boundaries between the progressiveness of theatre costume design and the commercialisation of fashion design. We played with the iconography of the sacred, sainthood and gestures from the history of Mary Magdalene, specifically the ‘Penitent Magdalene’ sculpture by Donatello, to present a protagonist. Performed by dancer Reece Tong, a space was created in the studio, where the prompt of re-creating a contemporary version of Mary Magdalene and putting her in the context of elevation through the heavenly, was given. Taking inspiration from the cyberpunk culture, specifically the ‘Blade Runner’ films, the work explores how abstract imagery can represent a visualisation of the future. Inspired by the clash of the artificial and the organic, the photographs of these images use techniques like solarisation to allure to a world in which the artificial has taken over. Contrary to the common representation of future dystopias, the work instead focusses on an elevation through the artificial; an exploration of how technology can elevate the human existence. The title reworks the idea of the fallen angel Lucifer who had sinned and has therefore been expelled from heaven. Instead, the word falling is used to allude to an active process, instead of a final destination which is visually represented through abstract methods like blurred motion. Removed from the pages of print editorial, billboard campaigns of social content, the installation is an attempt to find new ways of presenting the fashion image. The use of a spiralling staircase allows the viewer to elevate together with the work. Walking along with the underlining themes of the heavenly and ascent. The spiral design is based on a human DNA-string in an attempt to bring the viewer back to an underlying theme of the organic and artificial. The triptych arrangement of the work takes inspiration from traditional religious iconography of three painted panels being used as a triptych because they could be hinged, stored and transported. This gave the quality of being transportable to a piece of art. The triptych form has been under a constant process of reinterpretation throughout art history. Most noticeable are Francis Bacons triptychs, which heavily influences ‘Falling Angels’ mainly ‘Three Studies for a Crucifixion, 1962’. The vertical presentation of this project however, makes it distinguishable from the traditional format and decontextualises it in a way that allows for a new interpretation of the triptych. The traditional use of triptychs as an altarpiece is juxtaposed by the vertical alignment, a hint towards the artists unsureness about traditional interpretations of the heavenly through religion. The production of ‘Falling Angels’ has been a breakthrough in my artistic development. Inspired by the work of innovative image makers like Nick Knight, Elizaveta Pordodina, I am now confident about the importance of the fashion image in the contemporary art practice. Because of these development in the language of fashion, it becomes increasingly important for students of the arts to be supported by academic literature, teaching and resources that create the confidence to create fashion imagery without the feeling of being discriminated. Share this project Fallen Angels is an experimental fashion concept that explores how the poetics of fashion practice can be used to show notions about the clash of the organic and the artificial throughout human evolution. A link to this page has been added to your clipboard Browse related work Being Human Beyond Human Futures Identity BlackAndWhitePhotography ConceptualFashion FashionPhotography Sculpting StillLife
# Links ## Official page - https://ualshowcase.arts.ac.uk/project/439119/cover ## External - https://www.instagram.com/arthur.finch_ - https://arthurfinch.com - mailto:contact@arthurfinch.com - http://showstudio.com/ - https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fualshowcase.arts.ac.uk%2Fproject%2F439119%2Fcover&text=Falling+Angels - https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fualshowcase.arts.ac.uk%2Fproject%2F439119%2Fcover&media=https%3A%2F%2Fportfolio-tools.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2023%2F05%2F21165111%2FJULIUS-FINCK_FALLING-ANGELS_10.jpg&description=Falling+Angels