'Rebecca Horn’s early work focused on the limits and possibilities of human anatomy. She has returned to the subject in a recent series of drawings whose mark-making echoes the scale and movements of her own body. 

In 1968–69, aged 24, Horn spent several months as a hospital inpatient following a serious illness. The experience had a profound impact on her. She was already interested in the representation of distressed bodies, and her series of Hospital Drawings depicts human forms with various physical constraints or prosthetic attachments. Though these seem loosely based on medical tools or animal physiology, their function is not obvious and may appear at turns pleasurable or threatening.'

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/display/rebecca-horn

I chose to primarily look at Rebecca Horn's work as it immediately reflected the idea of restriction on the body, while creating other functions. I wanted to progress on this idea of restrictive yet extending, and they way her background has made her focus on physical constraints and prosthetic attachments, this has led me to progress into researching prosthetic, and also deformed body forms, created by adaptation and evolution, a key aspect I will stick to looking at due to my project proposal.

When realistically looking into the idea of extending the limbs, prosthetic are used in order to allow people whom have lost limbs, to be able to use replacements, still for the same function. 

Rebecca Horns interest in physical constraints inspired me to look at the concept of the spine and how it has changed supposedly due to evolution. The image shows how we have 'evolved' and how our spines have had to change in order to facilitate our bipedal-ism. 

'while walking upright freed up our hands for tool use, a key factor in human success, the resulting stresses from gravity on the human spine may have led to unique back pains'

This concept inspires me to use the spine as a focus, and create my piece based around this historical issue as it relates to everyone and can be communicated to the audience. The piece therefore will be placed on the spine, and I will aim to alter the models posture using the final outcome in order to raise awareness of this health issue.

Similar to the image above, these diagrams show how the spine develops and reshapes itself. By looking at these compositions it influences me to create the spine piece having my model do different poses and postures in order to show the deformation of the spine.

Scoliosis is the abnormal twisting and curvature of the spine.

It is usually first noticed by a change in appearance of the back.

Typical signs include:

• a visibly curved spine
• one shoulder being higher than the other
• one shoulder or hip being more prominent than the other
• clothes not hanging properly
• a prominent ribcage
• a difference in leg lengths

I decided to research into scoliosis as I thought it relates to my theme of the spine and how our bodies deform abnormally. It was quite interesting looking into this concept and how the spine can curve and twist causing severe physical problems because of issues such as muscle weakness - something I was looking into when looking at extensions of the body.

Bart Hess's project liquify I thought was very similar to Courtney Starretts work. I love the way the material is draping off the skin almost like another layer coming off the body. The way the materials movement creates almost a performance piece encourages me to work with a material such as latex, which can create interesting compositions.

I used Courtney Starrett for research within my production stage as her use of latex, imitating the skin aesthetic helped me decide on a final material for my neck piece. As I wanted a material which would hug the body figure, Courtney Starrett's works shows just this which has inspired me to go forward with the idea of using latex.