Decay

To begin with I decided to look at natural forms of decay, using photography as a basis for which my work can develop from. I am particularly drawn to the effects that have occurred and produced this outcome, which we perceive as filth, impurity and rottenness. Time, progression and development has brought a sense of liveliness as if it ages, continuously changing it's image over duration.





How can you find beauty in decay ?Within my work, I hope to address conflicting themes in order to explore society's issues using semiotic visual communication. From looking at this decay you can see that environmental aspects have interfered and helped this process of growth. Could this be a symbol of society's decay and how other aspects obstruct certain lifestyles, provoking crime ?






Beauty vs ugliness
What’s the problem?
Does one term dominate the other...?
Does one term define the other...?
Beauty is an invention...
it isn’t ‘fixed’ in its definition...
it’s the place where the personal,
the cultural and the social meet...
and is based on exclusion, rules
and power...
''We shall thus prevent our [citizens] being
brought up among representations of what is evil,
and so day by day and little by little, by grazing
widely as it were in an unhealthy pasture,
insensibly doing themselves a cumulative
psychological damage that is very serious. We
must look for artists and craftsmen capable of
perceiving the real nature of what is beautiful,
and then our young men, living as it were in a
good climate, will benefit because all the works of
art they see and hear influence them for good,
like the breezes from some healthy country with
what is rational and right.''
- Plato, Republic III 401
(Penguin p.97)
For Plato, a ‘healthy’ society only permitted beautiful art...
...and beautiful things were morally and ethically improving.

…taste in the beautiful
may be said to be the one
and only disinterested
and free delight
-Immanuel Kant, Critique of
Judgement §5

''Beauty and art were once thought of
as belonging together, with beauty as
among art’s principal aims and art’s
highest calling. However, neither
beauty nor art have come through
avantgardist rebellion and modern
social disruption unscathed. Their
special relation has, as a result,
become estranged and tense''
-Dave Beech, Art and the Politics of Beauty, p.12