Asha Thomas

ASHA THOMAS 

Painting - Artwork #1

This work is about the unconscious, how it affects our day to day lives and what happens to our minds during REM. Something I was particularly interested in exploring this semester was the idea of conventional morality - and I connected this to dreams with the consideration that our dreams are something we can’t purify, they exhibit our minds, as they are, in all their confusion. 

There are and have been many theories surrounding dreams but ultimately there is very little that we know about them, even in the present day. Some ancient civilisations believed dreaming was a portal to way-ward worlds where humans and gods were able to communicate. The Greeks and Romans believed that dreams had a prophetic quality. Freud theorised that dreams represented repressed desires and longings that are unable to be fulfilled and Jung concluded that they were an essential part to the individuation process.

My painting shows a dream that I had almost every night, for months on end. I would wake up in my bed, and magpies would surround me, having flown through the window, cawing and cooing and pecking at my skin. 

Praxinoscope - Artwork #2

In this new piece I wanted to further investigate the mind and body and the separation and/ or union of the two. I wanted to focus more on the intangible, as done in my painting, and thought that the praxinoscope would be an adequate way to do this. 

I chose to look at traditional animation techniques as when creating devices such as a praxinoscope it is necessary to properly engage both mind and body in its creation. A lot of modern day comfort in producing provokes loss of process. In my eyes, the process of creating something is just as important as the creation itself. I want to bring a praxinoscope to life in order to fully engage in the entire production, instead of using online software someone else has assembled. Many processes of creation are minimised further and further with the more technical advancements that are invented, making it all too easy for people to create in the most convenient possible format. I want to use traditional animation techniques for my own benefit, but also to confront the age that we live in, which is one centred in more and more convenience, ease and consumption.