MATTHEW SPENCER

My work as an artist focuses around my personal life and my experiences, along with themes and iconography that fascinate me. My most recent work is called The Divine Life, and portrays a storyline of four chapters consisting of Love, Solitude, Despair and Wrath. For the work I created a book with photographs acting almost as a storyboard for a film, then a video which represents the same story and imagery in video form. The book and film are a dual viewing experience and should be viewed as one along with the soundtrack over the film, creating an emotional ambiance to the imagery. It as a whole is a representation of my life and my journey through love and self-discovery. The film is captured from the perspective of me watching back my own life and seeing the female character portraying my emotional state in each chapter. The choice of a female character came from my experience of going through life and constantly seeing reminders or memories of past loves or past experiences, and always longing for the emotions I have already felt. I began the project as an educational look into cinematography, film making, colour theory and emotional attachment to colour. This was greatly inspired by Gregory Crewdson, David Fincher, ‘Blade Runner’, ‘Her’ and many more films and artists I have a great love for. With my work in the past and currently I have always wanted to provoke audiences and to create an emotional response. With this work I decided to go down the path of leaving the project open ended almost as if it were an unfinished film, or an in depth look into a film that was never fully produced. This was done so audiences will always be longing for more as if they had been teased, and are able to fill in the purposeful gaps within the work with their own imaginations or personal life so that they can closely and emotionally relate to me and my work. Religious imagery or themes have been the focal point of a lot of my work, whether it be work inspired by the afterlife with hell and heaven, or the crucifixion and the depiction of that pose, and strongly within this work the themes of hell, the deadly sins and ‘Divine Comedy’ by Dante Alighieri being used as an inspiration. The deadly sins are used within the titles of the chapters along with the text in the film.
 

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