Rationale For COP 2

My theme for COP 2 will focus on why members of society can still be so profoundly offended by nudity. Where do we draw the line between what is acceptable and what needs to be censored in terms of art that features nudity. I am interested in this because of the way my COP 1 work developed, the synthesis between my research and my sketchbook meant that whilst I was looking at things that are commonly seen as offensive and exploring those through research, one of the most common things that was coming up was nudity, such as the nudity seen in Chris Ofillis Virgin Mary. This then led to me making pieces in my sketchbook that centred around the parallels that can be drawn between nude Greek sculptures and nude people that we see on the beach or in the media. Why do we view these things so differently? Why can one been seen as vulgar and the other culturally valuable? This thought process then directly led me onto the free the nipple campaign which has been gaining massive amounts of momentum in the last few years, which I was also able to make a lot of interesting pieces around as its a very visual subject. This issue also synthesises with my own interests in feminism and gender politics as its often women that are persecuted for nudity more than men.

This is important because one thing I have learnt from rushing to pick a subject for COP 1 is that if I’m passionate about the subject it I know I can talk for longer and more enthusiastically about it.