This is my final four compositions and the layout of the presentation. The main theme of this series of designs is beauty of the grotesque. I took all four quotes from the movie Helter Skelter, in which the director explored one’s extreme pursuit of beauty and the unfortunate consequences of doing so.

The method in which I carried out my compositions was in repeating motifs throughout the four compositions. The background of all compositions were that of fashion editorial portraits. This was because i felt the thing that best represented the notion of beauty was fashion. While I ensured that portraits of a variety of races and gender were chosen as I felt theme was a universal one, and I should not restrict my subjects to a particular demographic.

Furthermore, each of my composition has common motifs of decay and grotesque imagery in the form of bugs, all tailored to their relevant quote.

The quote for this was “Pretty on the outside…but like a fruit that bugs have eaten from within”. The decay here is portrayed through the texture of rotting fruit on the subject’s hair. While, cockroaches crawling out of her mouth suggested her rotten insides.

The quote for this was “She was like a flower that was in full bloom but on the verge of scattering as soon as the wind blew”. Here, wilted flowers make up the subject’s body and soul, and it is infested with flies.

The quote here is “No matter how beautiful it is, a rabbit is still a chunk of meat once you skin it”. Here the decay was within the motif of skinned rabbits crawling out of the model’s head, and the bugs were the entire sea of maggots held within the head.

The quote here was “I hear a ticking sound. Something inside of me is going to end very soon”. Here, the decay is in the rust behind a face, and the decay is filled with crazy ants.

The decay is portrayed in rather abstracted forms with high threshold as I was trying to focus on their patterns to make the grotesque truly beautiful. I also kept to bitmapping the fashion editorials, and increasing the threshold for the motifs of decay, to maintain a consistent style.

Some things I could have improved on in this project were the composition arrangement and contrast of motifs in my design, as well as the fact that I could have done more documentation. Unfortunately, I did not manage to capture some test screens and prints as the silkscreen printing process was rather messy and hectic in the studio. Lastly, I wished that I would slowly learn to become more experimental and a little less result-orientated.

With this, I have completed my project 2 of 2D. I really learnt a lot both in skills and myself through this project. Thank you to Joy for being so encouraging throughout the entire process, I am really happy I managed to find my own visual vocabulary. Thank you to Xiu Meng too for staying back to help us with our screens and being so patient. I look forward to improving my exploring style in the final project!