Now that the rotations are over, it feels strange to be left to our own devices. A lot of people apply to do fine art so that they can do whatever they want without restriction, but right now the thought of being plunged into the depths of the unknown is terrifying. Unlike some, I find it difficult to just ‘do’ first and think later so the notion of just playing with materials and seeing where it goes in order to generate ideas annoys me. Materials are expensive and I want to use them when I at least have some sort of idea of what I’m doing, otherwise I feel like it is a waste. I found myself sitting in my studio space today. Just sitting. I hated it. There was literally nothing there, the lights had been turned off and there was darkness. Trying to take a step back from the work I have already begun, whilst I know that there are things left unresolved, and trying to start afresh is a real struggle. The idea of going in any direction excites me, but is overwhelming and frightening at the same time. An artistic oxymoron. To make up for a lack of anything productive I decided to rearrange my workspace, to freshen it up a bit seeing as it has slowly reduced to piles of paper, books and scrap wood. I thought that if I had a series of visual inspirations surrounding me then it might spur me on to add to it. It is a mix of work from all of the previous rotations in addition to some research images and some photographs from my summer project. In amongst all of this, I am sure there is some form of inspiration which I can draw from. Until then I am going back to basics and collecting source material from books and journals which I find interesting, and gathering it together to make a visual brainstorm; a resource of information which I can draw from to find a new direction in which to take my work. I am also pursuing an idea which Neil discussed with me yesterday; the filling of a sketchbook in a short amount of time – a day or a week. Becoming freer and less precious about making work, and documenting the everyday through a series of material experiments. I am currently recording journeys and interesting textures in an A5 sketchbook, and I intend to fill it this week. I’m also recording sounds using a Dictaphone. I already hate it, I have no idea what relevance it has to anything but I am gritting my teeth and going through with it, maybe by pushing myself through it I will have some sort of epiphany at the end of it. I can only hope.
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A friend of mine Katie and I have looked into the possibility of collaborating with a couple of the pieces of work which we have made for this project. Her work is a series of seemingly random video clips, with a variety of collected colours and textures. When reviewing each other’s work, we both had different issues that we were unsure how to resolve; Katie’s lack of sound on her video, and the lack of colour on my line drawings. As a result we have come up with the idea of projecting her video over the top of my drawings, then re-filming and taking still images which can then be source material to work from in the future. I have always been drawn to projection as a part of my working practice so I think that this small project could work really well and create some interesting visual results.
Over the past two weeks I have created a number of experiments relating to sound and the mapping of it, in addition to the visual representation of journeys and movement. These have included 2D drawings on a number of surfaces, reliefs created by wire being placed under the surface of maps and photographic experiments using layering of drawings in different light conditions. For the final presentation of my work from the past two weeks, I gathered a series of the experimental pieces that I have created and put them alongside one another. I wanted to link this back to the quote that a book is a “sequence of spaces” or a “sequence of moments”. My workspace carried these pieces that I had made in a series, with each piece inhabiting a space on the wall. I don’t consider any of these pieces finished; I see them more as experimental works that help me refine my ideas and processes to eventually work towards pieces which are more finalised. Now that the rotations are over, I can now begin to take all of the work I have created over the term and start to look into developing my work without being restricted by time. I can approach my ideas with an awareness of the materials that I can potentially use and methods of problem solving should I get stuck at any point.
Where does my work sit?
This is the question that we are to consider for the second half of this final project. We have to consider how to contextualise our work in its presentation, ie. A gallery wall, site specific, performance, time-based. We have been given the task of developing our work so that it can be installed in a space. This makes me think back to the Carrion quote "a book is a sequence of spaces". What I want to explore is what it is exactly that I present in those spaces. One idea which I was discussing with Kate was creating different responses to the same element/idea within my work in different mediums, and by presenting these together alongside one another it then becomes possible to see how the different materials react to the same ‘proposition’ that I put towards them. Because they each have their own limitations, it would be interesting to see how each medium translates the same idea. TRANSLATION. This wasn’t a word that I had initially considered when looking at my work, but I can now understand how my work is a series of visual translations. I am interpreting my own experiences and translating them into drawings and sculptural pieces. I think that this week I should focus on a particular aspect of these translations, and present a series of them alongside one another. Yesterday I visited Tate St Ives to participate in Young@Tate; an event for people aged 15-25, created by the Tate Collective. The collective had set up a number of activities to participate in throughout the gallery, including making postcards, surreal photography, and creating journeys through the gallery space. I was hoping to find out about how to get involved with the Collective group, as they are a key part in organising events at the Tate and in the local area, in addition to receiving training and opportunities to work with artists. https://circuit.tate.org.uk/2014/11/felix-reviews-november-youngtate/ The exhibition in the gallery; The Modern Lens was a collection of international photography from the 1920s through to the 1960s. I found that the scale and presentation of some of the photographs were particularly compelling, for example, the intimacy of the small photo prints in the ‘Objects Reacting Poetically’ series. By window mounting such small images it gave the image a sense of depth in which the viewer had to become involved in in order to see the photograph. In keeping with this series by surrealists Perriand, Jeanneret and Leger, I was also inspired by the encounters that the surrealists made with objects and architecture; photography was used to tap into the unconscious by disrupting the everyday. This relates to the methods that I am currently exploring through drawing, and looking into my personal interpretation of the everyday. ‘Lightplay Black White Grey’, a 16mm short film by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was a compelling composition of shadows created by his ‘light space modulator’; a kinetic sculpture. The monochromatic shapes overlap and move in and out of focus. It relates closely to the IMOOS created by Bryan Wynter which I have been researching. Light, movement, shadows. This use of kinetic energy and the capturing of a process in video and still image appeals to me and I want to explore how this could be incorporated into my own working practice.
These two works were placed alongside one another in a book that I was reading about sculpture, (A Concise History of Modern Sculpture by Herbert Read) and what struck me was the tactile nature of the sculptures; despite the fact that they are solid objects, they look as if it was only minutes ago that the artist was making the forms with their hands, as if they were moulding them like clay. It gave me the idea of making some pieces of 3D work by sculpting clay depending on what I could hear. I have been exploring this sense through other mediums but not yet directly with sculpture. I want to be able to create something free standing that is a direct representation of what is essentially going on inside my head. I hope that it can be as if I have just pulled the sound from inside my head and solidified it in clay.
I have been considering the ways that I can create a construction from the initial ideas that I had at the start of the week. I have come to the decision that I want to create something that is a visual representation of human condition, more specifically my own personal experiences. From my other rotations I have begun to touch on this idea and want to be able to make something that incorporates a number of different elements which I have produced over the last few weeks. I was looking back at the work of Chris Drury and noticed how similar our ideas are behind our work. Drury’s work demonstrates a relationship between human environments and natural landscapes; ‘internal’ human environment and external environments become one. From this I began to think about the relationship between internal and external environments; and how they could be considered the cover and the pages of a book; and if they can be the outside and inside of a book, then why not my 3D construction?
A book is a sequence of spaces. A book is a sequence of moments. This is a quote from Ulises Carrion that we were given yesterday. It embodies a lot of the themes which I have started to consider in this project. To develop my work I have looked back to the 2D > 3D > 4D project that we did during the Paint and Purpose rotation. I want to create a structure that somehow ‘houses’ a narrative, and by bringing flat elements to life I can bring 2D into 3D; re-establishing my point that to me, a book is not ‘flat’. Within this I want to create a sequence, or a series of elements that follow on from one another, and throughout I want to have something to represent an ongoing theme which runs through the structure. Similarly to the book that I created yesterday, I want to continue with the idea of a continuous line that represents the theme, a visual journey embodied in a single line. I am also considering the possibility of photographing the structure which I make, therefore compressing it back into two dimensions. To me this wouldn't be a book as it is a 2D image, but there is the potential to then use this image to work from, or make into something else. Another consideration is taking the 3D into 4D; and installing the work that I make. Similarly to my ideas in the Temporal Practices rotation, I could potentially make an immersive ‘experience’ for a viewer, using the components that I have created to build a structure for the viewer to enter. I now have to consider a direction in which to take these ideas, and since there are elements coming through from previous rotations I think I will look back to the ideas that I had started to form there, and carry them forward so that I can develop them much further. The fourth and final rotation is described as the most ‘open’ of the projects, in that it gives almost complete freedom for what work we can make. When asked ‘how heavy is a book?’, it is easy to think of a book’s physical weight. But when you start to consider the components and the content of a book, it soon becomes clear that this is a very open-ended question. The same goes for defining what a ‘book’ actually is. For some it may just be an object made of paper pages, but looking into deeper meanings behind what a book is all about reveals a lot of potential trails of thought to follow; Something that can be used to present a narrative A sequence; pages, spaces Something chronological A log of information Something secret, something to share; it has an audience An archive Something to read with the eyes (what about sound, touch?) A collection of objects, images, text A source A structure to build upon, a vessel to house information A journey, something with a beginning and an end Something with a theme that flows throughout it (even with major or minor deviations) From generating definitions of a book it has opened up a number of possibilities to explore when creating work. For the first task we were given three hours to create a ‘book’. From this I created a long drawing, taking references from parts of a map and some dried paint flecks that were on my desk in the studio. As a single line drawing I wanted to convey the idea of a continuous theme that runs throughout a book, defining the work with some sort of purpose. But I do not see a book as flat. To me a book is a three dimensional object which contains a series of spaces. So from here I began to score along the lines that I drew in order to bend the paper so that it could stand whilst creating an interesting relief shape. The ‘book’ is basic. I might not even go so far as to call it a book, I don’t think that it is developed enough, it is still too flat for my interpretation of a book. But what I do like is the idea of a continuous ‘line’ of a theme being manipulated into a three dimensional structure. I would like to continue to develop something along these lines this week.
From here we are to now to work independently on this project and to develop our work to be shown at the end of the week. I like the open nature of the brief as I can incorporate ideas from previous rotations, although I already know I will struggle to narrow those ideas down in order to start making something ready for the end of the week. This week has been a hectic one, in establishing an idea to carry forward to the presentation of our temporal practices work at the end of the week. Despite making several videos whilst out and about, I decided to focus on the clips of my feet that I made whilst walking. Following on from the ‘Walk On’ exhibition in Plymouth I wanted to continue the theme of mapping and the creation of a visual journey. I also wanted to somehow incorporate an element of the research I have been doing in relation to Tinnitus. For the presentation I decided to create an installation where the film that I created is projected onto the floor. The video consists of a number of clips of my feet walking in a number of locations. By projecting onto the floor I want the idea to be that people standing around the piece can feel as if they are coming on a journey with me, they are able to experience the walks that I took. For this part of the installation I had to make a bracket for the projector so that it could be used vertically rather than horizontally. At the time of making it seemed a very over-complicated process which really frustrated me, but the bracket was successful in holding the projector and additional media player in place. The other element which I included in the installation was sound. To make the experience personal to me I wanted the audience to be able to experience some of the sounds that I hear all of the time, so I made a recording of white noise to be played at the same time as the walking video. It is at the times when I am doing something monotonous, such as walking when I notice the tinnitus the most, which is why I believe that this sound was appropriate to play alongside the video. After showing the work to the group, a selection of books was recommended to me about sound art which I am keen to look at. The fact that I was capturing something mundane was also picked up on, looking closely at the things that we take for granted and making a record of it. I wish once again that there was more time to make work, as I feel that these rotations rush me into making work to present. I feel that this installation was very basic. Although I like the simple concept I feel that the outcome could be a lot more refined and developed, with more complex sound editing and a more professional presentation. I would like to carry on with the themes which I have touched upon in this project, but again the start of another rotation next week will most likely mean that I will have to keep these ideas on the back burner until a later date. |
AuthorThird Year BA Hons Fine Art student studying at Falmouth University Archives
April 2017
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