Work in progress…
The original rat images
The first sketch
The paper that I initially began using (above) was printmaking paper, not watercolour paper. So the colours wouldn't lift back off the page when water was re-applied. When I realised this I had to start again. (You can see the brush strokes are sketchy - I was trying to paint the colours separately in flicks of fur, that I thought would blur together when washed over with water afterwards. Didn't happen.)
Round two:
Some of the ideas going on:
Watercolour illustrations = associated with stories for children. I think that anthropomorphic animals in stories send mixed messages to children from a young age, implying some confusing double standards about animal welfare.
The title of this painting connects it to the nursery rhyme: 'Have you ever seen such a thing in your life... as three blind mice', as well as referencing the importance of scepticism towards scientific studies. Have you ever seen such a thing in your life? Really? Have you ever developed a giant tumour from eating popcorn? Know anyone who has? Could people really get cancer from eating GM corn? (Also, perhaps, blindness = metaphor for consumer helplessness, guinea pigs subject to corporate interests, unable to know what we're really consuming, as Seralini puts it 'eating in the dark'.) It touches on the circulation of misinformation regarding health science.
Monsanto's GM corn was not properly tested before being grown for commercial use. The lab rats in their experiments were only observed for 3 months, and even in that time there were some dubious results. They were, however, awfully quick to shoot down Seralini's research, even though the duration of his study was 8 times longer than theirs. The product went straight to market without proper testing. It's as if people - consumers - are the guinea pigs.
The thing that interested me the most about the Seralini affair was my observation that these lab rats, that had been fed GM corn (and RoundUp) and developed giant tumours, actually end up looking a bit like popcorn themselves. They've 'popped' just like the GM corn they are fed. You are what you eat??
The rats are life-sized, surrounded by larger-than-life size popcorn kernels - in this way size itself is also reference to genetic modification (and the idea of making things bigger.) As if the rats themselves are just pieces of popcorn.
Popcorn is a symbol for multiplicity; with that in mind, rats and other rodents are pests that breed and spread like the plague, spreading disease. It makes a connection that I see as fundamentally important part of my project: finding similarities between GMOs and introduced pests. And making the point that they don't belong in NZ.
It's also partially inspired by my part-time job at a cinema, which involves cleaning up a LOT of popcorn all the time. No one would ever eat this popcorn - it looks like it's in the bin (where else would you find rats?) so it references the problem of food waste. As well as the holocaust-esque disposal of sentient beings that is animal testing itself.
Why watercolours?
I've been trying to use watercolours for subjects that are appropriate to its unique traits - e.g. its 'lightness' is ideal for popcorn; 'fluffy' edges are the perfect technique for animals fur. I'm a painter so I appreciate the bleeding of paint across wet paper to create seamless tonal gradients without blending. And that, however deliberate a mark, there is an element of unpredictability, and seeing how pigments react with each other and dry often feels like a science experiment - which is, again, relevant to the subject here.
I wanted to make a watercolour painting that doesn't just float in the middle of the page. Hence a field of popcorn that reaches - and reaches past - the edges of the frame. It could be on the ground, could be a wallpaper, but either way it implies a wider extended pattern, a wider problem. Lots of them.
