Research & Critical Reflection

I thought up “Fairy Suspended” following a semi-constant influx of childhood memories that I didn’t know I still had, over the last year or so. This idea came to me after creating my installation work titled "Pillow Fort". "Fairy Suspended" was created to continue my exploration into the dream scape of nostalgia. I began drawing up “Fairy Suspended” around May/June of 2021, with the original intention to exhibit it at Testing Grounds’ last ever testing night show, which was cancelled due to covid lockdown. I’m actually thankful this show did not go ahead as this work ended up taking months to start and complete.

The Cottingley Fairies Hoax of 1917

In 1917, two girls fooled the world through a fantastical photographic hoax. This hoax influenced Charles Sturridge’s 1997 film, “FairyTale: A True Story”, which happened to be a prominent film for me growing up. Both the film and the original story have influenced “Fairy Suspended” in many ways, as it helped shape who I was as a child, but most of all for what it represents for childhood imagination and belief.

**Frances Griffiths with the fairies, 1917**

How critical feedback shaped the outcome

Each individual and group tutorial aided me in the final outcome of this work through discovering how *“Fairy Suspended”* was received by the viewer, intermittently throughout it’s creation process. The audience reception of the work is integral to the success of it’s final form. Thankfully, throughout the process of making and receiving feedback, this work was effective in allowing the audience to experience particular yet diverse feelings, as intended. Apart from overall aesthetics, *“Fairy Suspended”* is particularly reliant on each viewer’s unique interpretation.

Key words from feedback:

Intimate. Comforting. Discomforting. Spiritual. Ethereal. Inviting.

Warm. Maternal. Haunting. Vulnerable.

Fragile. Decay.

Emotional.

For this visual aspect of the work, I intended to create semi-realistic looking mushrooms and wings. “Fairy Suspended” is visually and conceptually intended to feel both real and artificial at the same time, to aid in communicating the feeling of being in a memory. Apart from the water illusion aspect, the wings and mushrooms, themselves, play the biggest part in the visual treatment of the work. I paid attention to nature and researched a multitude of reference imagery for the choice execution, clay and sculpting of the mushrooms, as well as the structure of the fairy wings. Paying attention specifically to shapes, folds and natural blemishes. The use of air drying clay, for the mushrooms, was the most realistic, durable, affordable and effective material.

Regarding research and reference work for the mushrooms and wings

Artist Influences:

Petra Collins
Tim Burton
Dana Trippe

Polina Osipova

Rosslynd Piggott

Sonya Tikhonova

Zac Posen

Thierry Mugler

Jana Brike
Bill Viola

Pierre Huyghe

Exhibitions of Influence

Rosslynd Piggott: “I Sense You but I Cannot See You”- NGV (2019)

Tim Burton: The Exhibition - ACMI (2010)

Textual Research

Aristotle. 2018, The Metaphysics, Translated by J.H. McMahon. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
Clarke, D. 2021, The Cottingley Fairies On Display, Dennis Publishing Ltd, London.
Collins, P. & Demie, A. 2021, Fairy Tales, New York: Rizzoli.
Panelas, T. 1982. Yearning for Yesterday: A Sociology of Nostalgia. Fred Davis. American Journal of Sociology, 87(6), pp.1425-1427.
Zeman, A. 2001, Consciousness, Brain, 124(7), pp.1263-1289.