A class per week for learning Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premier and Adobe InDesign / Encore. Another week for learning AutoCad. An exercise for each program type.
This was followed by an assignment that incorporated each of these tools. Brief: Create a ‘visual essay’ in printed booklet form, together with a short film on DVD. A number of themes were provided.
A grave is called the ‘final resting place’. But this place is anything but final or restful. A grave and the cemetery in which it resides has a life of its own.
This visual essay investigates the decline of the burial places in the O'Neills Point cemetery in Bayswater. This is North Shore City’s oldest cemetery (North Shore City Council) and contains graves for deaths in late 1800’s to mid 1900’s.
The graves must have initially been structurally created with stone and cement, some embellished with marble and granite, and others more extravagant with tiles and mosaics. The graves are laid out in a seemingly random order and it would be difficult to find a specific gravesite (North Shore City Council).
Over the years these graves have worn away, been weathered by natural elements. Inevitably the site has changed. The elegant lines of headstones are withered and smoothed. Rain seeps into tiny cracks and over time jagged crevices are exposed. The supremacy of nature over manmade elements is evident.
Human destruction accounts for the deterioration too. The cemetery was described as a “troubled place to rest, due to vandalism and poor maintenance” (North Shore Times Advertiser, p. 9).
The living world is not a restful place, and perhaps the same can be said for the world of the dead.
Walking through the cemetery and experiencing the weathered, withered, worn sites brings up a number of questions. What is the effect of deterioration? Are the buried bodies becoming exposed? Is the respect for the dead diminished? Is the holiness of the site lost? Or is the space still beautiful in the deterioration?
The juxtaposition of intent and reality plays on the volatility of nature and human behaviour over time.
DVD Box:
DVD Cover:
DVD Label:
Insert Cover:
Insert pages:
The finished product:
References:
North Shore City Council. (n.d.). O'Neill's Point Cemetery. Retrieved April 14, 2010, from North Shore City: http://www.northshorecity.govt.nz/cemetery/cemetery_info/oneills-point.htm
North Shore Times Advertiser. (1994, November 01). A victim of time and vandals. North Shore Times Advertiser , p. 9.
List of images:
Insert - Back Cover
1. Trickett, N. (n.d.). Bone Daddy 001 [Photograph.] Retrieved August 15, 2009 from http://saintverde.blogspot.com/2009/08/bone-daddy.html
2. Munch, E. (1894). Death and the Maiden [Drawing]. Retrieved April 14, 2010, from http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/Images/ARTH200/Women/munch_death_maiden.jpg
3. Carravaggio.(1608). Burial of St Lucy [Painting]. Retrieved April 14, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_of_St._Lucy_(Caravaggio)
4. Trickett, N. (n.d.). Bone Daddy 011 [Photograph.] Retrieved August 15, 2009 from http://saintverde.blogspot.com/2009/08/bone-daddy.html
Insert - Page3
1. Munch, E. (1893). Death and the Maiden [Painting]. Retrieved April 14, 2010, from http://romanjaster.com/edvard-munch/gallery/death/death&maiden.htm
2. Hugo Simberg. (1896). The Garden of Death [Painting]. Retrieved April 14, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Death
3. O’Neill’sPoint Cemetery [Photograph]. (n.d.).Retrieved 14, 2010, from http://www.northshorecity.govt.nz/cemetery/PDFs/Cemetery_search/cemetery_oneills.pdf
4. Goya, F. (1819 - 1823). Saturn Devouring His Son [Painting]. Retrieved April 14, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son
All other images
1. Crawcour, H. (2010) [Edited Photographs]
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