Appropriation.
verb (used with object), appropriated, appropriating.
1. to set apart, authorise, or legislate for some specific purpose or use.
2. to take to or for oneself; take possession of.
3. to take without permission or consent; seize; expropriate:
4. to steal, especially to commit petty theft.
Upon being given our appropriation brief I began to think about how I could appropriate something that is a seemingly harmless image, to capture something much darker that reflects the truth behind it.
One photographer that stood out to me in the lecture was Barbara Kruger. The majority of her work consists of taking an iconic existing image and pasting a bold and concise caption across the top of it to change the context of the photograph in the very drastic manner.
Her work was very popular in the 1980’s and still holds to this day. One of her more famous pictures captured the huge part she played in the feminist movement of the time caption ” Your body is a battleground” (1989) The inclusion of personal pronouns in works like Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am) (1987) implicates viewers by confounding any clear notion of who is speaking. She intelligently combines wit and direct commentary in order to communicate and make a statement about our society and culture whilst reusing wonderful imagery from past campaigns and advertising.
Following my inspiration from Kruger I really wanted to make a similar bold statement about society using my own ideologies and issues I feel are very substantial in today’s world.
I began to play with a concept that I feel quite strongly about in regards of our disassociation as a species of what we eat, in particular from companies that fund cruelty and are unethical in their practice for both the food itself and the health effects on those who consume this food. I took her particular iconic style layering a bold white futura typeface over a red text box and black and white appropriated image to highlight modern animal welfare issues in our modern society.
I felt this was fairly effective but wanted to create my own style of appropriation taking inspiration from Kruger’s work having red as a main feature colour.
The animal conservation group WWF demonstrated numerous uses of appropriation in past campaigns, taking a photograph of an animal or scenario that would be considered fairly plain and editing them in a manner that could be considered both disturbing and shocking.This is certainly in order to push them to think about their own actions and make the connection between a living creature and the product of a dead one.
In WWF’s campaign against buying exotic animal souvenirs they had used an edited stock photograph and added in the trail of blood behind the suitcase – yet again with my inspirational artists I’m noticing the consistency of red as a main colour to make a really bold impression and make viewers STOP and think.