Eyes on: Victoria Bishop

June 12, 2022

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It’s not every day that you can notice a great artist when they are just still in the making!

This is the case with UK Michael Jackson fan Victoria Bishop. She is currently at University for the Creative Arts of Canterbury and for her BA Fine Art, she created a display dedicated to … well of course, Michael Jackson!

Her exhibition currently at the UCA until July 7, is a true representation of creativity, talent, fandom and friendship. She mixed her passion from the King of Pop with what it represent to her: friendships with other Michael Jackson fans!

Here the description of her work:

Being a Michael Jackson fan and collecting his memorabilia has been the source of inspiration for the exploration of the theme and terms of fandom and collections throughout my practice.

“The continued creation and circulation of stereotypes of fans and fandom in the media as signs of how groups within society are continually rearticulating and reasserting what it means to be a fan. Some media representations of fans and associated fan practices stereotypes them as ‘sad’, ‘weird’, ‘nerdy’, ‘freakish’ and ‘juvenile’. This merely highlights the fact that those who mediate such stereotypes are themselves trying to comprehend and justify their own identity as a fan or, but more simply we are all fans of something” (Geraghty, 2014:15).

I decided to express what it is like to be a fan through Michael Jackson. Although there may be similarities, it is fundamentally different to creating fan art; I am using Jackson as the subject to express this meaning and for the viewers to relate to the feeling of hysteria via their own fanaticism. The work has a psychological undercurrent to fandom through hysteria; I have been looking into studies by Sigmund Freud Studies in Hysteria (1895) and Michel Foucault Hysteria (1965) which depicts hysteria as being an exaggerated and uncontrollable emotive response –directly connecting to fans’ unanimous experiences of uncontrollable emotion, which are at their epitome when interacting with their idol, at concerts for example

My Degree Show exhibition reflects on this hysteria through an intense accumulation of work and the use of repetition. My work is inspired by artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Pipilotti Rist, Andy Warhol and Peter Dreher’s Day by Day, Good Day (1974 – present) who use repetition of the same/ similar visual field triggers different responses from the audience. Joni Mabe with her intensive collection of Elvis memorabilia in her Everything Elvis; and Candice Breitz who makes use of wall space with hundreds/thousands of videos of fans singing to their idol’s music, portraying hysteria towards an idol.

Repetition has been a key tool in my practice, and most obviously in my latest body of work: subject and image repetition, affecting both aesthetic and internal sensory experience. My 25 works are repetition of subject matter, meanwhile, I used repetition of the eyes from Jackson’s Dangerous (1992) album which I made the conscious decision to draw digitally due to the infinite possibilities of replication and repetition, for example: as it can be multiply printed, as printed paper materials such as concert tickets, newspaper articles are valuable to a fan. The sheer multitude of eyes covering the walls create a sense of being watched, resulting in perhaps notions of paranoia, triggering at the viewers instinctual reactions and behaviours, despite the viewer being the only one actively looking.

The resolved body of work consists of small digital prints and oil wood paintings postcard size as they reference the paper material of collectables that are highly valued by fans. The traditional works derive from selected images in my personal Jackson collection which are of higher value to me, both materialistically and sentimentally. I considered this when choosing my media and opted for oil paints to represent the aforementioned value and labour-intensive aspect of my practice.

Lisa Milroy has inspired me to show an object fully on the canvas such as Shoes (1988), and scaling down my work and working with photo-realism to create visual trickery. These works are individual as it makes each item special but seen as a collection. I painted on plywood as a contrast to the paper aesthetic whilst still being an elemental material from which paper originates. This material is substantial like the objects being painted, at postcard size like the digital prints so they have a collectable sized-theme I have created a space comparable to a shrine, emphasising a strong sense of unconditional devotion, which includes 5 shelves with 5 wooden oil paintings on each self, equalling 25 works.

25 is a common number with Jackson’s collectables – such as his 25^th Anniversary albums. In 2022 it will be 25 years since his Blood on the Dancefloor (1997) was released, a print of the artwork of this album is displayed. Alongside the BOTDF print, a signed photograph from Jackson’s photographer during the 90’s is included, to whom I have connections with from the community. This is to combine my collection within the work and community, whilst connecting with the use of paper being important within fans collections. Digital works can be duplicated, which makes oil paintings more valuable as they are one-offs. The 24 digital works are printed as postcards and available to the audience as handouts so they can take away a collectable of the collection.

A video portraying community, connecting fandom with hysteria is included, which in the space of 6 years since I fully joined the community and went to fan-based Jackson events such as house parties and flash-mobs in London, going on Jackson-themed holidays in LA and Vegas, also to Jackson tribute shows and The Jacksons concert. The addition of this piece results in a total of 50 works on show, which is the age Jackson passed. My conclusive goal is to communicate what it is like to partake in fandom regardless of the subject. This exaggerated but conceptually accessible shrine aims to relate to the viewer, challenge their ideologies surrounding fanaticism and serve to comfort one’s own individual sense of what it means to be a fan.

What I love about her representation of her experience as a fan is that she set her own fandom with her MJ friends in a slideshow watched by hundred of Michael Jackson’s eyes.

“It just shows how close the community is and it’s important that this remains because of such an impact that it has on people’s lives. The MJ community has changed mine for the better and it can change others, and its just very special”

Check out her slideshow and a little tour of the exhibition:

Victoria’s thoughts on her work:

“In the future, it’s difficult on where I would see myself, I would love to pursue and continue with art. It has always been a passion, however it has been difficult on which artistic field is right for me. I researched into fields such as Gaming, digital art, marketing, art psychotherapy, Art conservation, and studied architecture for a semester when I started university, before deciding that this too wasn’t the right path and continued with my roots of studying Fine Art (which was the best idea). In the near future, I am hopeful to search for employment non-art based, and this will allow me to explore artistic fields and to discover myself in the artistic field, as I would like to make use of my skills and my overthinking within this field, whilst having passion, I would love to do fan art and create work for the community, have passion to create work and the receiver to feel the passion I have for Jackson, but this is something I can do at any time and would love to pursue, but I’d also want to push boundaries and see where my practice goes with certain opportunities, which the nomination for Crate could give me; having art kind of on the side-line like this to hopefully be temporary, allows me to figure out a path.

As an artist, I have always been timid. I constantly ask questions. I am very communicative to my tutors, to make sure I understand everything thoroughly but also that I am doing the right thing, however my tutors have always been nothing but confident in me and my capabilities, it’s just me being over-cautious. There apparently is no ‘right and wrong’ in art – however I disagree – art is subjective, very opinionated, so if a tutor has something negative to say – it’s seen as wrong from a students perspective. I have been able to continue to do what I want with my practice, include Jackson and base my concept and use my ‘fannishness’ in a contemporary art manner.

Jackson has always been a huge development on my practice, due to the unfortunate views against him, there’s plenty controversy, even though I disagree with this controversy as a person – being a stan, but as an artist, I have to keep this in mind and use this to develop my practice, because of course I can’t change everyone’s mind, but that’s not my intention. Just like my previous project during my UAL accredited Art Foundation in 2017/18 – I created a final piece with a portrait of Michael in 2007, 25 years after Thriller was released, wearing a crown taken from a 1983 photoshoot from Matthew Roleston, in addition is Perspex in front that has repetition screen-printing of facts that I gathered from various sources from my research, portraying Jackson’s innocence (seeing as the exhibition for this piece was Victory Day 2018) – my intention for this wasn’t to necessarily change people’s mind on Jackson and the case, but it’s to display it, put the information out there, communicate that, and they can still choose what to think. Similarly the same concept with this piece but not so political (in the art world). My work is about the community, as aforementioned, Jackson is a subject as I am a fan, but it could be anyone – I wanted the audience to take this feeling I am communicating of being part of a fan-base and the feeling of hysteria towards a figure and relate that to their own desires. A particular tutor (harsh but incredible) – couldn’t see this sense of hysteria that fans have for an artist in my work, this is where she said I am too timid, which was true and discussions on artists who used hysteria and the use of repetition has been used to express this – this is where I implemented the repetition that I used in my work back in 2018, and used it do repeat the famous Dangerous eyes for reasons stated previously. This has allowed me to include my passion for Michael within my work, but in such a way that I feel would be most ‘right’ in contemporary art and to not just be seen as fan art and to have a deeper purpose.

During the evening of the private viewing of the exhibition (June 10^th 2022) at the university, I was in my space with some Michael fans. A woman found out it was my work as she appears like a tutor/critic from the art world, because of how our communication was going, and she did state about how I based work on a controversial figure but created it in such a way that what I intended to create through my work has been portrayed perfectly, and this feedback made me ecstatic because every element of my work has been thought of and to receive this from a complete outsiders perspective, within the art world, fills me with such confidence.”