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Oliver Childs

Through the use of painting, digital drawings and mixed media, my work focuses on the relationship between people and social media.  The messages created through my work focus on the influences social media can have on men’s mental health and body image, as this is something I feel is often ignored when talking about the effects of seeing ideologies online.

Using portraiture, my work captures the relationship between person and screen. The imagery in my works aims to blur the line between social media and reality, exploring what people perceive to be real life but is false, and the consequences of that on how one perceives themselves.

Online Imitation
2021, Oil on 3 aluminium sheets
Each: 100cm x 100cm

Online Imitation is a triptych depicting overlapping imagery of online personalities and images of myself, creating a direct comparison of my body to theirs. The fractured style of the imagery creates the effect of a cracked phone screen showing what I see on my phone and the reflection of my own body, which I compare to what can be seen online.

Scroll
2021, Video
42 minutes

Scroll is a recording of my phone screen, switching between my personal Instagram and digital drawings that I have done. The video provides insight into the ease of finding images of other people that can provide a representation of the body people often compare themselves to. Alongside this is images of my digital drawings, displayed in an Instagram format, provide a repetitive series of images, representing the intense bombardment of images that appear on ones Instagram.

Oliver Childs 7

This series of digital drawings depicts line images of myself and a person from my Instagram. This illusional image blurs the line between who is the influencer and who is influenced.

This series of digital drawings twists between images of myself and a social media personality. The images create a direct comparison of my own body to those seen online, reflecting my own experience with body image.