Week Two | Violent Death
Following the presentations today in the second session of the MA so far, I found myself wanting to talk more about the dawn paintings than the evening or night paintings. Night feels still and clear to me, dawn (possibly evening) is eerie and full of horrors. I began the process with a foreboding sense of the night but possibly through the Nightswimming series I feel connected and peaceful about the night.
This week I would like to explore Dawn Findings, as a working title. This is the idea of the victims of violence being discovered in the early hours. Women and girls as victims of violence with their remains found in remote, otherwise insignificant places, landscapes. The cold and wet of dawn in this context is deeply disturbing to me and the rawness of a haphazard, lawless death and burial, partial burial or discarding of victims.
To do this week
Research well known victims of violence in recent years such as Sarah Everard - the discovery process
Discovery of other women's remains - dawn findings. circumstances, places, what do they have in common, if anything. Forensic lens that is cast over otherwise unnotable places or places with benign or even ordinary identities.
Relationship between those places and the women's lives. How do their involuntary places of death relate to their lives and identities? Near or far from home etc.
How will I do this
Firstly internet research, open enquiries
Investigate library references CSM and others
Image searches
Open word associations, poetry
This painting 'Dawning' from the Nightswimming series was the first piece that investigated a cold, uninviting dawn. In the making of this painting I had the first thoughts of victims of violence and where they might be found, how they might be found and by whom.
Research on Violent Death in Women in recent years
Femicide Census report 2020 statistics on women murdered by men in 2020
Women killed by men https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-56365412
Found in suitcases, fridges, parks, riversides, graveyards, boot of car
Found by dog walkers, family, joggers.
Bodies never found?
