Self-i

Ian Phillips McLaren (b. 1960) is a British contemporary artist, his varied practice combines contemporary and 19th century photographic processes, video, sculpture, performance and animation.

His body of work examines dementia as a state of being, memory, personal identity and the construction of self in our visual culture, portraiture and self-representation.

Ian’s current work, The ‘Self’ & The ‘Other’ is an exploration of the ‘Self’ through the lens of ancient Roman portraiture – The ‘Other’ referring to the ways in which identities are formed.

“By combining traditional 5×4 inch analogue paper negatives of my self with hybrid digital negatives of ancient Roman portraits and fragments, I’m re-imagining the historical self-portrait, in a similar vein to how the Romans re-imagined (Hellenistic) Greek art for their own purposes”.

I hand my subjects / participants a remote control where they take their own photograph for a fixed duration of time, they are in complete control of how they pose and present themselves. During the Covid 19 lock-down some participants emailed me selfies that they have taken with their mobile phones. I then take their selfie and manipulate it. i.e. My interpretation of Instagram / mobile phone filters and textures. R

The ‘Self-i’ walk through virtual gallery can be viewed via this link. https://self-i.co.uk

Fine art prints
Most of the images on this website can be purchased as a fine art prints. Email me for details, if you can’t find your image in the shop.

'Self-i' Series

Self-i Series

This is the link to the The ‘Self-i’ virtual gallery link. https://self-i.co.uk

The selfie is a millennial social phenomenon; Once the sole domain of teenagers, it has now permeated our culture on a grand scale arguably distorting how we perceive ourselves and how we want to be perceived, as we turn the camera in on ourselves.

In essence selfies, it could be argued are a form of self-portrait and the West has a rich history in this respect. It starts with Albrecht Dürer signing his famous self-portrait age 28 in the early 1500’s. Unwittingly, (or was it? We will never know) he started an enduring cultural phenomenon that has found form in all artistic media across the globe, that of depicting your face as the place that you reside (your self). In the creation of a selfie, artist and subject are fused (literally and metaphorically).

We take a form that has traditions and accepted boundaries and then create many copies of our self. I wonder if these copies are a way of saying I am here. Here is my Self!

When Vincent Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo painted self-portraits, it was to interpret their emotional landscape. Van Gogh even depicted his self as a chair. However, more commonly now self-portraits captured on Digital Media serves the purpose of capturing “our best life” – perfect, the ideal, no matter how far removed that image may be from reality.

The norm today is to retouch and put photos through filters and textures to make us look different or better in our own eyes. My intention was to experiment with a variety of processes and techniques to explore my interpretation of filters and textures in this respect.