5104 - Presentation and Evaluation

Final Piece on Display

Evaluation

In reflection, it has been a rocky journey as my interests with this object were changing regularly from start to the middle, eventually discovering what theme/factor boldly stood out. As I first encountered the Hotchkiss naval gun, the focus was predominately on the aesthetics of the object and originally wanted to see how weaponry had evolved over the years. That idea didn't go in depth that much in terms of understanding this particular gun's significance.

To better understand the object, the research was taken into the time and place of when it was captured, which was the Boxer Rebellion in the turn of the 20th century in China. Learning about the gun's context of where it came from boosted my progress and influenced me into wanting to focus more on the historical side to the object.

I moved onto Birmingham's gun manufacturing history, to focus on the questionable irony of abandoning a significant object of culture from the early 20th century. My short video touches on this irony but I didn't feel overly impressed with making a video as it didn't truly express the cultural importance of this object. If I was to make the video again, I wouldn't even address the issue of Birmingham's history of gun manufacturing as I lost motivation and admiration quickly, unlike how I approached the Boxer Rebellion.

Moving on, the decision was made to create an illustration of the Hotchkiss naval gun depicted in a way that could addressing the issues of taking objects away from their "home". It will be using the idea of personifying the object in order to emphasise the appeal to the audience. Due to not planning my time efficiently as I could with two other modules at the same time, I couldn't originally go through with creating a large oil painting so I changed the medium choice to a digital illustration. As modern technology is very popular, it would be able to grab people's attention quicker and support the cause of the very old naval gun's wish to be returned to China.

Overall I am fairly pleased with how the final piece has turned out, as it has been placed in the corner of room G.05 so the area itself can emphasise the dim mood of the piece. With the inspirations of anthropomorphism used in fairy tales and the media, it is a strong way of connecting the audience with what they're looking at. The human figure representation of this Hotchkiss naval gun did exactly what I felt like it needed to do and that is to make people question its existence. After applying features such as traditional Chinese characters that say the words "I don't belong here", the red turban on the figure's head that was used by Boxers and the sunset lines used in Chinese propaganda, it has proven to become a believable piece of propaganda that makes a bold statement of returning the artefact in a traditional and yet non-traditional sense. If I was to have done anything differently with the final piece, it would have been to apply the print onto a medium that has a better cultural connection, like a material commonly used in China and create more illustrations to see the difference in the impacts.