"Welcome?" project

The 'Welcome?' project was in response to my abroad holiday in the Canary Islands, Fuerteventura. Whilst in Fuerteventura I became very aware of how subjected it had become to the first world companies greed for money, these companies being holiday package businesses such as Thomas cook and Thomson's holidays as well as high street shops such as H&M and Zara.

The traditions of this island had been taken away from it and its people. Whilst looking for any traces of the islands origins I found none but those that met the wants of its tourists, for example, sangria, a traditional alcoholic drink, very popular to those commonly found British and German tourists. It was disheartening to find the island riddled with American and British poison. Those being Mc Donald's, Burger King, Dunkin' Donut's, etc and commonly found stores that in Britain are found on almost every next street. Once taking these factors into account I started recognising into further depths the corruption this island faced. The individuals from that island are being faced with the motive of struggling as a money insufficient island or to take on welcoming tourists onto their land where they can sell property, earn money through the tourist’s uptake I.e. accommodation, food, drink, entertainment. Generally the cash flow would benefit hugely but this is at the cost of losing their precious and private land. The people will be forced to learn English and German so as to communicate with the tourists and remain or become employed. Agricultural work and employment will suffer as land will be bought up so as to build new tourist facilities such as hotels and villas. Water mains will need to be built, which will first come at the cost of the locals, and their own water supplies may be minimised. They will be forced to decorate the land to meet the needs of the tourists and by doing this, hundreds of years of memories and important personal factors of the place may be ruined as a result.

I wanted to incorporate this into my project as this was a current issue I was facing and I felt strongly about some of the opinions that I had formed. The project involved a large 3D cardboard, collage image containing a mix of photographic Images and painted images. The image as a whole was made to look like a foreign holiday destination with clear bright colours and a sunny background and within it included images portraying a Spanish land with other images showing the corruption that the first world countries had upon it, in particular, Britain and America.

I am not satisfied with the final outcome. The image looks naive, especially with the painting. It was not very well put together and it needed a lot more time spent on it and a lot more of an attention to detail. As it was my first attempt at a cardboard collage I am putting this to reason. I have seen professional cardboard collages and they have looked really effective. I know that with more practice I can achieve this. Originally the image was supposed to be a digital 2D photo montage but with the limited time I had to complete the project I didn't have enough time to learn how to create it properly and I didn’t have a very good understanding the resolution settings. My talent lies in digital art so I need to progress with this.

I have continued to use painting as a means of creating a project and I have come to learn that this method does not work well for me. The painting and the disorganised, unplanned arrangement of the collage images meant for a disappointing result. The lack of quality in the image took the strength away from the view I had and the statement that I was making. I am happy to have found a few of the steps I need to climb towards progression. The images that I used would have also benefitted the piece if they were my own images; many of them were taken from the Internet. All around the piece needed much more planning as I don't feel it did much justice in representing what I felt and as my objective as an artist is to create awareness, I don't believe this picture did it well.

When I asked people what they thought of the piece, they would asked me what it’s about. If I am to create awareness then my work will need to be clearer and more obvious, this piece was too scattered and it didn’t provide any level of ease when looking around the image. The eye would not dance around the image because of the bold, abrupt colours layered out in an irritated manor.