I decided to research my aunts paintings, sculptures (Meltem Erden (Irmak) Painter-Sculpture Artist1950-1997, Istanbul, through her illness, despair, fatal disease pain, emotions turns into creativity related existentialism.

My starting point is making a mind map with getting tutorials from my tutors.

It would be nice to have the mind map.Always more visual as well.

I do some photocopies with blue cartridge related to my aunts paintings colors and make them purely visual.I put them on my studio wall, have these connections put them me all up visually. In the future the plan would be useful for making collage.

I have my aunt’s exhibition book as the description helps me a lot.In this book, before she passed away how she survived with her illness, pain through her artworks i saw and researched. Sadly, it was her first and unfortunately last exhibition on 1997.

The book published in 1997, Istanbul Maltepe Art Gallery(Maltepe Sanat Galerisi)

Related her exhibition book, I read “The Sickness Unto Death” by Soren Kierkegaard refers to belief as Christian principles.Despair “truth  and deliverance”is bound to progress of sickness.

Ongoing Research Theories; in the history of philosophy, humankind to the animal has been expressed as the ability of the humankind to invent tools and to think, that is, to function as beings who can create technology and culture.Soren Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism he claimed that animal is connected with suffering and humankind is the synthesis of finite and infinite, permanent, freedom and determination.A thinker who influenced many other thinkers such as Nietche, Sartre and Heidegger says “self”cannot exist in this synthetic relationship and in this sense human beings are desperate, our despair and suffering is an asset because it different from human from animal, however it is at the same time, the terrifying aspect of our helplessness, it is a lack because it marks out utter.Kierkegaard defines desperation as equivalent to the soul and the self and thinks of desperation as a feeling that is generated by responsibility.

On 6th November, we talked about skinless boundaries, death and horror as people who has medical conditions that they feel exposure, distress or in pain with suffering with Philippe and i thought if i respond these feelings with natural materials.Philippe suggested me to read “Powers of Horror” Abjection by Julia Kristeva. It’s disgusting, felt scared, how disturbing but very helpful and I thought what am i? On her paintings there is no Freud’s approach the phase of childhood whereby the self is shaped by the mother and the father, the responsible person is the self her or himself.So each self carries the responsibility on his/ her shoulders.While the self realizes her or his reality their container can’t carry his/her existential being.Also surrealism is connected with psychology so as to feeling into the imagination of my aunts suffer. I am thinking if i create either her paintings on my own or create object as i tried to create spinning wheel i inspired by Meltem Erden’s painting as tried to make a sculpture with natural material and bioplastics.

REFLECTIONS

13th September 2025 RCA Exhibition at London Design Festival-Brompton Design District for London I explored material sculpture

24th September 2025 at Morley Gallery I explored texturing, bioplastics, wire stitching

I have collected these natural materials as wood, sycamore seeds, plane tree parts to use for my assignment in the future

1st October 2025 “Hughmanity”by Hugh Hayden at Lisson Gallery – I explored natural wood cuts, art with nature

5th October 2025 “More Than Human” at Design Museum for my art work; “Life In Circle”as i have done with orchide soil with tea leaves.

Nature techniques are so much connection as my part of the spinning wheel, i used orchide soil inspired by the book Radical Landscapes, Tate.For the poetic piece when i look deeper i might respond to my aunt’s painting that the soil communicate with other tea parts.

Identity and landscape simply meeting of human feeling flesh and elemental , dead matter.

The sculpture by Andrea Buttner “Stones with Moss”2018, express desire to dress up in nature, to wear environment.I wonder if this opposite structures classified by hidden life contact with loneliness that the world of objects.

I also explored Claude Cahun’s identity and landscape as the eccentric idea of nature life’s work is considered to have strong parallels with existentialist themes, particularly in its radical exploration of identity, authenticity, and freedom.

8th October 2025 Bioplastics Morley College Bio-Lab – I quite interested in tea leaves and kombucha then started experiments

14th October 2026 “Different Perspectives” at Saatchi Gallery – I explored textile with mixed media

15th October 2025 “Goavve – Geabbil”by Maret Anne Sara at Tate Modern – I enjoyed making rounds with natural materials as which i inspired once my future scooping subject and by Tate Modern exhibition.

16th October 2025 Cork Street and Dover Street Galleries Visit (Sadie Coles, Hauser & Wirth, Helly Nahmad, Stephen Friedman, Messums London, Goodman Gallery, No9, Waddington Gallery, Tiwani Contemporary, Alison Jacques, Monika Spruth )

27th October 2025 – Gallery Visits in Prague -Old Town Square Salvador Dali- Andy Warhol- Basquiat

(Inspired by Warhol’s Family Remembering)

12th November 2025 Morley Gallery Renewal & Reinvention by London Guild of Weavers,Spinners and Dyers

“Everything we see hides another thing” Rene Magritte.I researched Magritte that he focussed on the tension between what is visible and what is hidden. 

I inspired by Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) French-American artist while creating my human face reflecting states of emotional and psychological trauma or breakdown.

My research is also Francis Bacon an artist whom Bourgeois greatly admired character heads exploring facial expressions.

Ruth Asawa-

I wonder if i can make an installation with my current artworks so i researched from the book Vitamin 3-D New Perspectives in Sculpture and Installation, i borrow.

Urs Fischer-Page 130-Body Parts as Nose installation-Holes

14th January 2026 V&A East – I quite interested in searching spinning wheel.This device was fundamentally invented by James Hargreaves during the Industrial Revolution in 1764 then developed by Richard Arkwright 1767 and for the quality yarn created by Samuel Crompton in 1779.

Some spinning wheels are on the top and i couldn’t reach them

These vintage darning embroideries are from my grandma.They are sentimental and traditional. Both are handmade and perfect for spinning wheel.

22nd January 2026 Penny Lecture visitor – Mark Leckey I explored his sound art works, also interested in “Wellcome Collection”

25th January 2026 London Art Fair at Islington Design Centre to see printmaking, textiles, sculptures and paintings.

29th January 2026 – Ongoing research theories; I quite interested in some of the MA Critical Theory lessons since 14.October. 2025, i joined on Thursdays as developing critical art history. Especially “Postmodernism”. For me it’s forever! I feel postmodern as contemporary art tendencies. Also i am very close to “Feminism” as i researched last year for my “Woman in Violence” Interim Exhibition Show on March 25 and also Performance Art & Ceramics show on June 25.

So MA lecture was so helpfull about my knowledge about art history as we learned how we involved modernism or postmodernism or did we engage? I am engaging postmodernism in style art as playful use and critics claim political, aesthetics. i feel more contemporary that artistic expressions combine with objects or media rather than classical traditions.

3rd February 2026 V&A South Kensington to explore Japanese Art , figures, sculptures

4th February 2026 Serpentine Gallery “House Of Music” by Peter Doig to explore his sound art with paintings

Bibliography & Books:

Meltem Erden – Painter and Sculpture Artist (1950-1997)

https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1DGUBQDjA8/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Maltepe Sanat Galerisi Yayinlari (1997) Meltem Erden. Istanbul

Maltepe Art Gallery Publishment (1997) Meltem Erden.Istanbul

Franklin, K. and Till, C. (2018) Radical matters. London: Thames & Hudson.

Kierkegaard, S. (1849) The sickness unto death. Translated edition. London: Penguin Classics.

Sartre, J.-P. (1946) Existentialism and humanism. London: Methuen.

Sim, S. and Van Loon, B. (2001) Introducing critical theory. Cambridge: Icon Books.

Gablik, S. (1985) Magritte. London: Thames & Hudson.

Ellegood, A. (2009) Vitamin 3-D: new perspectives in sculpture and installation. London: Phaidon Press.

Harris, J. (2001) The new art history: a critical introduction. London: Routledge.

Pulitzer Arts Foundation (2018) Ruth Asawa: Life’s work. St. Louis: Pulitzer Arts Foundation.

Tate Liverpool (2022) Radical landscapes: art, identity and activism. Liverpool: Tate Publishing.

Coxon, A. (2010) Louise Bourgeois. London: Tate Publishing.

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