Candle Stubs

The rest of the candle becomes the work and these sad little remnants are left behind.

Roni Horn

I looked at Roni Horn's work of the Thames River initially. I was thinking about in relation to my maps of the surface of the contact lens because they both seem equally pointless and futile. Horn's because the water to which the annotations relate only existed in that one photograph - what does it even mean to view water as a still thing in an image? Its useless, its gone - and mine because its absurd and nonsensical. Annotating my map or numbering it like Horn's might make it more about the concept rather than the aesthetic - I don't want it just to be a map just because it has visual similarities, I feel there needs to be more.






Horn's annotations touch on the kind of solemnity and poignancy that I associate with my own way of thinking, as she mentions abstract notions and poignant events. This is all clouded in great abstraction and mystery because we cannot really know the context to these short descriptions. It is, as I have been researching with titles, between the text and the imagery where the meaning is made by the viewer. The gaps in knowledge, the space for the imagination.

I found this quote from Roni Horn on metaphor, which I thought was interesting because metaphor for me does not distinguish the unknown, but ties things together in strange ways to make something other, not the truth, just an image of what it might be.

"You use metaphor to make yourself feel at home in the world," says the artist in this clip from the episode. "You use metaphor to extinguish the unknown. The problem is the unknown is where I want to be."

Although I really like the idea of doing a similar thing to my map with annotated phrases, or including text in some way, I immediately encounter the issue of what to write that doesn't sound too dramtic or over-thought. I always struggle with writing anyway and tend to avoid it if i can because I never know, and hate that I can't know, how somebody will read and interpret it. Aside from this fear, I have been thinking about what I could write, and I really don't want it to sound as if I am preaching or suggesting that the work is about something. I think the beauty of the visual element is that people can see a load of different things in it without me being at all prescriptive. Writing, although in many cases, and indeed as i am wrote in my dissertation, can provoke the imagination, it may also limit it.

Kaleidoscope Design for End of the Road

As an extension from the kaleidoscopes/taleidoscopes I was making at the beginning of this year, I came up with the idea of making one for End of the Road this year. It is a very different setting to gallery situations so requires the consideration of different things. Instead of being really conceptual,I wanted to make something that would be visually interesting and entertaining to a broad range of people. I also had the  idea that people would be able to have their picture taken through it, as that is what many people have to show from their time at a music festival. It is a little painful to think so literally, even commercially, in this way but the making and design of the object will be enjoyable. 

These were some images I too as a quick mock up of what the view might be like when the kaliedoscope is positioned in the woods. 

New Images of Contacts

On Monday I met up with Max, who is a second year MNHP student, and who photographed my lenses before Christmas. The surface of the lenses had changed so much that I felt it would be worth taking another set of photos... even if I don't use them now I will have them for a future work, and it is much easier to get hold of someone who can take macro shots now than after I leave.

Unfortunately the same equipment as last time wasn't available so Max had to manually track the shots instead of using a digital one, which makes it easier to take more photos. I do feel like this impacted the quality of the photos slightly as before I had used up to 20 images to make one photo and this time was using as few as 5 images on some lenses.

Editing and stacking the images was tricky to  begin with because I had to remember or re-learn all the processes but I found that I was far more compotent on photoshop this time round and sped through the editing to get them ready for making into slides.

Overall I am really pleased with the edited images, some of them more than others. It always seems to be the ones I don't think will look right that look the best.

Two Carousel Slide Projectors

(studio) space

 My studio is such a beautiful setting for these pieces. I wanted to see them in a different, less domestic environment as well as suspending them for the first time. Although they look very lovely, I still have quite a disconnection from them. I'm not feeling like they convey anything meaningful, and instead are trying too hard to be some sort of replica of planets, and failing because they are so fake, so unscientific. I can't allow that.

Burning Surface

Degree Show Work - Decisions

It is very slowly dawning on me that there is really not much time left until the degree show so I need to stop researching and even experimenting and making in order to get on with the work that I willl actually be exhibiting. At the moment I am finding it really hard to picture my degree show at all - I can't imagine the space and I can't imagine what work I will display in it. I  think i will just really have to think about which are my favourite and most successful works and focus on how they might be displayed.

I will definitely be showing the images of the lenses on the slide projector because I think that is a really effective piece, but I am going to try and get some new images of the lenses and have them printed professionally onto slides so that they are in colour as opposed to the black and white acetate slides.

I also have it in mind that I will make a print of the surface of the lens as a map in the style of the moon maps and am starting to think how I might display this.... I think displaying it in a cabinet would be really effective and further the idea that is like an old map in a museum.

I would like to have something 3D/sculptural as well, but I am not sure what that will be yet as I'm not entirely happy with my wax moon experiments.

Including the Everyday

Just logging a quick thought htat I had about my work: sometimes things just dawn on me about the way I work and why it might be. I tend to use things that I see in my own environment during everyday life, but as well as this being the result of how I think, it is perhaps an intention as well. Including everyday things, such s dustpan brush bristles and contact lenses and candles, maybe a viewer will think of my work when they next encounter these objects in their own lives.That would be ultimate ambition - for someone to look at a really ordinary thing in a slightly more profound way because of something I have shown them.

London: James Coleman, Mark Wallinger

This was my favourite work of the day by Mark Wallinger, where four screens showed the view driving round a roundabout in four different times of year. This was evident from the big tree which was a focus of the image. I loved how you stepped into the centre of the work, were forced to be among it before figuring out what it was about. That first minute of discovery was thrilling - dizzying also because of the constantly revolving motion. 

There was another such moment of discovery from Wallinger in the room next door, where a life-size projection of a barbers shopfront seemed to be a still image. We stood looking at it for a while taking it in and then left... and then we read the handout from the front desk and immediately made our way back through the exhibition to the video... there was a clock inside the shop whose second hand moved two seconds before the video repeated. That transformation from not knowing and not seeing to seeing and perceiving was magical. It affirms to me the validity of the accompanying information...it is not a cheat sheet, it makes the work.

Easter Holidays - Wax Moons and Planets

I have dedicated Easter to (chilling and) making these wax moon shape works so that I have an idea of what I'm doing when I go back. Originally I wanted to get hold of a toy model of a moon and cast it, so that it would have all the surface bumps as well as the connotations of it being an educational model. However, I genuinely could not find one of these anywhere to my surprise. I decided instead to buy some spherical plastic molds (or makeshift molds) to experiment with.

Although curious about the result, I'm not entirely. They're just a little underwhelming, perhaps because I need to practice the execution to get a neater join, or switch the colours up a bit. I think it is worth doing a few more experiments to see where it goes.

Spencer Finch - 'The Opposite of Blindness'

As part of our London gallery trawl, Ed and  went to see Spencer Finch's show 'The Opposite of Blindness' at the Lisson Gallery. I did not know anything about this work beforehand accept that Ed had looked into his work because he works with colour. I read the statement on the hand out and was really intrigued. It certainly sounds like my kind of thing...

"His subjects are the ineffable and evanescent: the human condition of remembering or the quality of light at a given moment – all lending to a full comprehension of nature in spite of man’s technological advancement. In the impossibility of their undertaking, his endeavours are frequently Sisyphean, matching a Herculean task with a touch that is deliberately slight and human, with the ultimate aim of igniting wonder."

Light and blindness and vision and slight touches - it sounds like the perfect exhibition for me.

Igniting wonder - that's what I want my work to do and that's what I want artwork to do for me. However, looking at the work, I just didn't get that.

Finch's still life series, where the colour of tulips was logged at different times of the day, just as much of the work, was pleasing to look at but didn't provoke wonder. Maybe this is because they are paintings, although I hope I am not that disengaged by 2D work, or perhaps it is because it is an idea I am quite familiar with. My Blue Marlble project of last year, logging the colour of my house each day and seeing how the colour differed, explored the same idea.

The more interesting thing about Finch's work to me was probably that they were described as still lives, and indeed they were still...but still ever changing. Is light ever still? Lightness and darkness...are they ever the same from one moment to the next. This regard for vision was the success of the exhibition for me. Another work, which I didn't find that visually interesting but was intrigued by how it reconfigured perception of image, was titled 'Sunflower (Bee's View)'.

Ultimately, I thought the work was pretty but not poetic. I suppose, instead of being melancholic about sight and blindness like my work, Finch's approach seemed more of a celebration.

Casting Tea Lights / Votive Candles

After visiting Gloucester Cathedral I managed to get hold of a few empty tealights that were used a sprayer/votive candles. I had originally thought about using the aluminium casing to be melted down and cast into words or phrases but I will need to wait to be back at uni to do this if it is possible. For the time being I have cast them in burnt candle wax, dripping the black wax drop by drop into the cases. I'm not entirely sure what this is supposed to represent apart from drawing attention to the candle as an emblem. The darkness is almost a reverse of the 'light of the world' symbol as well, although that has far too negative and anti-religious connotations that I have no interest in. 

Conceptually it would probably be better if I used a different material other than wax that was more neutral, which would highlight the space where a prayer once was before it burnt away. I'm interested in the prayer, or feeling of hope that the candle represents as a physical thing. However after a few initial experiments and some thought i am very wary of using too may religious connotations lest it becomes a little twee...mentioning anything to do with prayers or hope sounds far too spiritual for me... I need to find something that symbolizes these things without having connotations that will be offputting.