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Gallery Images Tourism is the largest industry in the world and is a significant force in contemporary society with far fetching economical and cultural importance. We all want a holiday but why do we feel the need so desperately to retreat? What are we searching for, and what do we hope to experience? Select art students at the Brit school considered these themes and created contemporary works of art inspired by their own personal stories. Creating experimental preparatory work and final pieces in their last year at the Brit school based on the title ‘Life Art and Tourists Eye’. Tourism has a massive effect on other countries. When considering tourism, the students took into account the art, the history, and the social construction of places like Japan, New York and Asia. These places were compared to our own British culture: Sarah Hopkins’ piece is an intangible look at the way countries begin to lose their ethnic diversity by becoming more westernized through tourism. Today’s graffiti artists such as Banksy epitomize London culture. Some students created urban pieces in contemporary shades of yellow juxtaposed against the typical red, white and blue of the tourism trade within Britain like the typical tacky London culture's union jack underwear and postcards of the queen. Others took a more personal view, looking at the whole concept of ‘wish you were here’, but ‘here’ being 'home' as opposed to 'away'. Nina Malysheva's beautiful painting shows the heart break and emotion of missing someone, and the London backdrop outlines the romance of the city, often seen in British Romance and Comedies like ‘Love Actually’ and ‘Match Point’. Romance and idealism are Jade Cole's subjects, her conceptual piece is based upon holiday romances – arguing that, too many people go on holiday to find love, she mocks the obscenity of the idea in a mixed media piece of bold statements and stories collected from friends and family. Another theme of stereotypical tourist is mocked by our culture, tourist that come to London with their massive backpacks, taking pictures of things we find usual and take for granted i.e. telephone boxes, pigeons in Trafalgar Square, and until recently, and the old Routemaster red buses. But what about how the British behave when they are abroad, being labelled the worst tourists ever; never eating foreign food or taking on the language! Some of the artists in the class looked at the archetypal British holiday, ‘caravanning’, using that typical décor to create a related piece of artwork that de-glamorizes holidays. Jade Coles |
