The Other Perspective
Annabelle (13)

My sculpture is a book covered in a newspaper with pictures of the Jewish Star (Star of David), the Nazi symbol (swastika), images of terrorism, cultural Islamic dress and a wire hand pulling the book open.

The book represents the world. The newspaper represents the news of the world and how the history of events gets covered in the media.

The pictures represent the issues that people have opinions on without even investigating and learning about them for themselves. The hand represents the minority of the world who chose to learn about these issues for themselves. Make a fair and informed judgement about them. These people do not get all their information from one source, they try and teach the majority of the world to open their eyes and see The Other Perspective. The Other Perspective is about seeing things how other people see things and learning what the history of the issue is.

For example, the Iraqi war, some people think America went to war with Iraq to stop them developing nuclear weapons because they thought Iraq untrustworthy and they shouldn't have them. However, The Other Perspective is that is we have them.. why shouldn't they?

Maybe this sculpture has made me realise how often I don't find out about the issues surrounding and the history of events before I judge the situation and the people involved. It has taught me that I should do that in order to make a fair and proper judgement. Then I can share my thought with others to help then form their own ideas. This makes me quite angry with myself and with the world for not being bothered to really think, "why is this happening?" It makes me really think about how much I don't know about the history and causes of some many things and why they are going on and it makes me want to find out.

The sculpture means 2 things to me; it means ignorance because of the people ignoring and turning a blind eye to issues and effort because of those few people making an effort to learn for themselves. Some people choose to hide from the truth and don't want to believe it. What you might not have noticed is how the bit of book that is being opened is the thinner side. This is showing that so many more people ignore the truth rather than trying to uncover and learn it.

The newspaper around the book is quite hard and rough. I have done this because the meaning of my sculpture can make some people angry and I think that the hard, roughness, captures that. I decide to make the book black and white so it captures the mood of anger, which was my intent. Made the hand smooth because it represents the goodness of the world. I used green because I believe it to be a calm colour. I think my sculpture is spiritual because it is on an issue that I am passionate about and it sparks strong emotions within me. I hope it will within others. It is spiritual for me; it may not be for others.